DUTIES, 



TESTS, AND COMFORTS. 



By rev. DAYTON F. REED, 

1 1 

OF THE NEWARK ANNUAL CONFERENCE. 



By key. J. McCLINTOCK, D. D. 



SECOND EDITION. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
HIGGINS & PERKINPINB; 

No. 40 NORTH FOURTH STREET. 

1857. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by 

HIGGINS & PEPvKINPINE, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and 
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 

STEREOTYPED BY E. B. HEARS. PRINTED BY T. K. & P. G. COLLINS. 



SN £XCHANQS. 

'Ors'w Theol. Sem. 



and such 



INTEODUCTION. 



Ik spite of a reluctance to writing Introduc- 
tions, which may hereafter be imperative, I have 
consented to furnish a brief one for this book. 
The Author has spent nearly twenty years in 
itinerant and laborious preaching, though he is 
unknown to the public as a writer. His line of 
life has not been favorable to literary pursuits, 
simply as such ; the Methodist preacher's task 
is, in the language of the Discipline, not so 
much to gain knowledge as to win souls. His 
chief business is to preach the Gospel, and to 
that he devotes himself — studying how to im- 
press listless minds, rather than to round periods; 
how to convey truth surely, and to fix it deeply, 
rather than to clothe it elegantly. In this field 
of labor the Author has been a faithful worker. 
And his industry has brought its natural fruit 

(3) 



IV INTRODUCTION. 

to liis own mind^ in a large acquaintance with 
men, in a clear insight into the wants of the 
Church, and in a wide knowledge of the sources 
both of the Church's weakness and of the 
Church's power. 

The work now offered to the public is no 
hasty production. For many years the Author 
has had his mind fixed upon certain great lines 
of Christian thought ; and he has been largely 
useful in conveying them to the minds of his 
hearers in oral discourse. That religion is a 
practical thing; that it is to rule our every-day 
life, our studies, our habits, our business, our 
modes of getting and spending, our plans of 
life, and our schemes of profit — as w^ell as to 
be seen in our church-going, and to be heard 
from our lips : this conviction is deeply incor- 
porated wath the Author's whole habit of think- 
ing and feeling. And his book is but the utter- 
ance of this conviction. 

Its title classes it at once with books oi prac- 
tical religion. There are two sorts of books to 
Avhich this term is applied; viz. such as treat of 
personal religion and its experience in the soul, 



INTRODUCTION. V 

and such as exhibit piety in its fruits and activi- 
ties in life. The present work falls under the 
latter division : it is^ in fact, in the main, an 
exhibition of the ethical side of Christianity — 
an application of its principles to the conduct 
of life. Its lessons come home " to the business 
and bosoms" of men. It views Christianity not 
as a theory, but as a life ; not only as bringing 
precious promises, but also as laying down irre- 
versible laws. In a word, the object of the 
book is not so much to proclaim the privileges 
of Christianity as to set forth its duties; or, 
rather, to show that the enjoyment of its pri- 
vileges is made absolutely dependent, by the 
Great Master himself, upon the performance of 
its duties. 

The reader will see that a large part of the 
volume is taken up by two Essays on Christian 
Benevolence, the remainder being occupied by 
shorter pieces, on personal practical religion. 
He will see also, on closer inspection, that there 
is a certain unity of aim throughout all these 
papers, however various their titles may be. 

While they constitute a miscellany for desultory 
1* 



VI INTRODUCTION. 

readers^ a consecutive perusal will disclose a 
connection through the book. The steady aim 
is to enforce upon Christians the duty of an 
absolute consecration of their persons and their 
property, of their time and their talents, of 
themselves and their children, to the service of 
Almighty God on this earth. This great thought 
shows itself, more or less, in every page of the 
book. The writer sees that the progress of the 
Church is hindered in every land by the selfish- 
ness of men professing to be Christians, by the 
want of enlarged views of Christian duty, and 
by the general prevalence of low and earthly 
aims, even among those who claim to be " the 
ransomed of the Lord." The great w^ork to be 
done, before the Ark of the Lord can move on 
at its predestined speed to its final resting-place, 
is to settle, in the mind of every member of 
Christ's Church on earth, the true law of that 
Church ; to bring each individual Christian up 
to the mark of personal consecration which that 
law fixes; to convince every believer that, 
amid all the sympathies of life, whether social 
or intellectual, there ought to be one master 



INTRODUCTION. Vll 

sympathy — and that an earnest yearning for 
the progress of the kingdom of Christ. The 
pages that follow are full of lessons to this 
purport. 

The scope and style of the book are in har- 
mony with its aim. The first paper is an Essay 
on "Enlarged Beneficence." Books on this 
topic, and on kindred subjects, have been mul- 
tiplied of late ; but there is still room for more. 
On a theme so important, and coming in con- 
tact so directly with long-established habits and 
modes of thought, we need "line upon line and 
precept upon precept." Without in any respect 
disparaging any of the excellent books that 
have recently appeared on Christian beneficence, 
I can honestly say that the Author's treatment 
of the subject has merits of its own which do 
not appear in any of the others, and will doubt- 
less make its impression upon many minds 
which would not be reached by existing publi- 
-cations. His exhibition of enlarged as distin- 
guished from systematic beneficence, is an in- 
stance. He shows that it is our duty to bestow 
largely of our means for the advancement of 



Vm INTRODUCTION. 

Christ's kingdom, first, from the teachings of 
Scripture. The summary, given in a few pages 
(pp. 23-25), is wonderfully impressive. It runs 
as follows. Riches are God's ; if he lends them 
to man, he will have an account of them ; their 
right use is a necessary condition of the Divine 
blessing ; and, finally, the direst woes will fol- 
low their misuse. Equally impressive are the 
examples drawn from Scripture history. The 
Author urges us to imitate them, by the needs 
of the Church, by the wretched condition of 
the Pagan world, and by the worthiness of the 
Church's great enterprises for the spread of the 
Gospel. Not satisfied with this, he presses upon 
us the weight of our obligations to God's mercy 
and to Christ's blood, and beseeches us, for our 
own souls' sake, to love Christ more and money 
less. 

Equally direct and forceful is his method of 
setting forth the duty of Systematic Benevo- 
lence. It is first shown to be obligatory ; and 
then brilliant examples of its actual perform- 
ance are narrated. The next step is to show 
the grand results that would follow, to the 



INTRODUCTION. ix 

Churchy to individual Christians, and to the 
world at large, from the general adoption of 
system in our Christian giving. The excuses 
of penurious souls are laid bare with merciless, 
yet deserved severity. A few " loving" yet 
^' plain-dealing" remarks, addressed to wavering 
and endangered readers, close the Essay. 

The spirit in which the Author writes is 
perhaps best stated by the two epithets quoted 
above — loving, and plain-dealing. The book is 
animated throughout by a burning love for God 
and for the souls of men ; everywhere it is 
clear that " it is the love of Christ that con- 
straineth" the pen of the writer. And his cha- 
rity for his readers, of all classes, even those 
who may be least willing to heed his admoni- 
tions, is equally obvious throughout. Indeed, 
it is to save them^ as well as to incite them to 
good works in saving others, that he writes. 
But his charity is accompanied by too deep and 
pungent a conviction of the vast importance of 
the subject, and the need of a thorough awaken- 
ing with regard to it on the part of the Church, 
to allow him to '' prophesy smooth things" to 



X INTRODUCTION. 

the Lord's people. Indeed, the book is terribly 
in earnest ; and this, of all others, is the essen- 
tial requisite for a book of practical religion. 
Without this holy earnestness, all charms of 
style, all beauties of diction, all harmonious 
turns of thought or phrase, are sad mockeries 
in a writer professing to teach duty to dying 
men. But under its impulse, a man of com- 
paratively little cultivation has words of power 
always at command; his strokes are aimed 
directly at the mark, and every blow tells upon 
its object. 

I commend this book to the Christian public 
as eminently practical and truthful. It cannot 
fail to do good to all that read it attentively ; 
and there is in it a holy power of Christian 
sympathy and earnestness that will command 
the reader, unless his heart is utterly out of 
harmony with the great laws of God's 

kingdom. 

J. McClintock. 

Philadelphia, December 12, 1856. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

AN ESSAY ON ENLARGED BENEFICENCE 13 

AN ESSAY ON SYSTEMATIC BENEFICENCE 68 

A FIELD FOR HEROISM 131 

A SPECIAL PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY 143 

THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST 156 

DELIVERANCE FROM A HORRIBLE PIT 159 

A BRIEF COMPARISON 165 

PRIVATE PRAYER 166 

A HINT TO OPEN DOUBTERS OF ENDLESS MISERY .... 171 
HINTS TO SECRET DOUBTERS OF ENDLESS MISERY . . . .173 

THE FIRST STING OF THE UNDYING WORM 178 

INIQUITY IN THE HEART 151 

FOOLISH TALKING AND JESTING . 186 

OUTWARD ADORNING 189 

THE CONDEMNATION OF THE DEVIL 191 

LOST RELATIVES 194 

GROWTH IN HEAVEN 196 

LOVE IN THE TRINITY 198 

THE EXCELLENCY OF LOVE 200 

SUFFERING IN LOVE . 203 

REJOICING IN SUFFERING 213 

The Essays on Beneficence in particular, and, to some extent, 
all the articles, are referred to in detail, hy a table at the close of 
the hook, . (11) 



AN ESSAY 



ON 



ENLAEGED BENEFICENCE. 



CHAPTER I. 

IMPORTANCE OF THE THEME. 

Tpie great channel by -which the vehement selfish- 
ness of this age finds vent is money-getting. To 
this tend the wishes and pursuits of all grades of 
society ; from the newsboy to the stock-jobber ; from 
the idle street-beggar to the panting gold-digger ; 
from the peasant with his mind on products and 
prices, to the prince plotting for power. 

The sway of Mammon extends from California to 
Australia. Over other false gods, 

" High on a throne of royal state/' 

he sits. It is a wide-spread opinion that, in our day, 

wealth is the principal idol. In a sister church, and 

2 (13) 



14 AN IDOL. 

in another nation, a great man — tlie same who had 
the magnanimity to pronounce Methodism " Christ- 
ianity in earnest" — lias expressed the general senti- 
ment of pious and discerning minds : " Wealth is the 
goddess whom all the world worshippeth. There is 
many a city in our empire of which, with an eye of 
apostolic discernment, it may be seen that it is almost 
w^holly given over to idolatry."^ To help to show 
the danger of Christians and others from this source, 
and their only safeguard, is the object of this and of 
a succeeding Essay .^ 

The importance of the theme is heightened by the 
fact that giving money aright is essential not only to 
the dethronement of the idol wealth, but to the 
extension of the grandest work upon earth — the 
enthronement of the true God in hundreds of millions 
of hearts. Let us see. 

Is not the most important work in this world, if 
not in the universe, the salvation of immortal spirits ? 
A spirit is the sublimest product of the Divine hand. 

^ Chalmerses Works, vol. vi. p. 204. 

^ It is hoped that readers belonging to other denominations 
of Cliristians, or to none, will not slight these pages, if some 
remarks occur more specially applicable to members of the 
Metjcd'st Episcopal Church. Even in such remarks the design 
is, as in other parts of the book, to deal with truths of univer- 
sal obligation. 



A GREAT WORK. 15 

Surely, when God creates something like himself, he 
will go no higher, as to kind, in creation. And a 
spirit, though it may have lost the moral features of 
the Divine image, still exists as a real something 
upon which that image was once enstamped. God 
has determined that this something shall not be anni- 
hilated. Think of its value. No matter how restricted 
its present dimensions, if it is capable of continued 
growth. We know it to be thus capable, on earth. 
And may it not grow eternally in heaven ? Will not 
heaven be as favorable for its development as earth, 
while God, the soul's portion, infinite in all possible 
perfections, will be the source of ceaseless accumula- 
tions of knowledge and goodness ? The idea of an 
atom expanding to fill all known space would be 
inadequate for a comparison. We have in view not 
only something, which in its nature is incomparably 
a,bove matter, however sublimated, but an increase of 
it beyond any limits which the mind can possibly set — 
an increase, not m creation, but in the boundless 
Creator. 

What a salvation, then, has Christianity to proffer ! 
What a work to be done upon the children of men ! 
If you find a lack of means for its spread over the 
earth, you indeed find a deficiency deeply to be 
deprecated. But is the great work hindered ? It is, 
" if Jesus Christ tasted death for every man," and has 



16 A HINDRANCE, 

adapted His gospel to all, and commanded it to be 
published ^'to every creature/' and yet there re- 
mains a single man deprived of it. How, then, 
alas ! is it hindered, Tvhile there is deprived of it a 
large majority of mankind — a number so vast as to 
send into eternity, every year, more benighted souls 
than is the whole population of the United States ! 
There is, indeed, a hindrance somewhere. Is it in the 
Holy Trinity ? What vast provisions and influences 
give an overwhelming negative to such a suggestion ! 
Is the fault with good angels? Indeed they work 
not against their own ''joy." Dofallen angels impede 
the gospel, without the concurrence of human voli- 
tions ? Surely, then, the hindrance is with mankind, 
who have the good news, and may, if they will, fur- 
nish it to the destitute. 

In pre-requisites for sending the gospel, is Christ- 
endom more delinquent in one thing than in another ? 
Is there any particular kind of supply most sought 
by the general and standard appeals of the aggressive 
organizations of the church? If an agent ranges 
through the land for the Missionary, the Bible, the 
Tract, or any other cause, what is the want most pro- 
claimed and reiterated? And, after the labors of 
the messenger, to what do the councils of the church 
have necessary reference, for spreading the truths of 
Christ ? The supply of money. Here is the great 



MONEY ANSWERETH ALL THINGS. 17 

omission. Perhaps all others put together should 
not arouse so much action and deprecation. How 
often may this be the secret defect where others are 
lamented ? Are prayers of faith, and zealous eJSbrts 
of mind and body, demanded ? Alas ! with how many 
church-members may the suitable consecration, at 
present or in prospect, of idolized earthly gains be 
the essential and most difficult consecration prepara- 
tory to a high state of piety, and therefore to the 
believing prayers and zealous exertions belonging to 
such a state ? 

And, what if it were the leading object of a travel- 
ling Secretary of the Missionary Society to seek men 
for missions, instead of money? Might not the 
remedy soon be found in contributions sufficient to 
break up parental schemes for mammon, which con- 
flict with rearing children for missions ; and to pro- 
vide educational facilities equal to the aspirations of 
many poor, but pious youths, in whose hearts is a 
hidden missionary fire ? 

The demand for money is not peculiar to the enter- 
prise of spreading the Gospel. Look at the whole 
round of physical, intellectual, and moral enterprises. 
From the eflfects produced, review the means used. 
Do you not find that we are contemplating a general 
necessity to success ? Is it not seen, in the words of 

one, whose wisdom from above enabled him to take a 

2* 



18 A CHEERFUL RESIGNATION. 

full survey, that ^' Money ansTvereth all things?" 
(Eccl. X. 19.) There is a philosophical necessity for 
this. Money, by the common consent of mankind, 
is the representative, and the controlling agent, of 
the provisions and means absolutely required to sus- 
tain man in existence here. 

Money has control of the food to strengthen the 
hand which constructs the steam-boiler, or draws the 
magnetic wire, as well as the hand which translates 
the Word of Life, or prepares the press and the paper 
for spreading it before dying souls. Must it not, 
then, be inexcusable folly for members of the church 
of Christ to question the absolute need of money ^ 
money ^ and still more^ and more money ^ as more and 
more work is done for Christ upon earth? Even 
unregenerate men, with their earth-born zeal, go to 
the full length of their purses in secular schemes, 
without pausing to inquire why there is such a cease- 
less call for money ^ money. Shall Christian hearts 
become painfully sensitive under the cry for money 
to be bestowed largely as possible, as well as sys- 
tematically (every Lord's Day, if practicable), for the 
extension of His kingdom, while men of the world, 
through all the week-days (and some on the Lord's 
Days), sit, walk, work, or run, in cheerful resignation, 
under a steady din of money ^ money ^ and never think 
of great results without ! Oh, Christian reader, 



A REQUIREMENT. 19 

surely you will never dare to complain of hearing 
much about money, for your Lord's work, when you 
reflect upon this patience of mere worldlings in quest 
of their ends. And whence is Zion's money mainly 
to come, if not from church members ? 

Shall we rely upon the worldly masses for needful 
supplies ! They have their own aims ; and, with few 
exceptions, have not learned to prize others. Alas ! 
they are not only incited by the calls w^hich you must 
have for the necessaries of this life, but most of them 
are resolutely and idolatrously in pursuit of much 
more, for '' the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, 
and the pride of life.''^ Christianity must depend 
principally for money upon Christians. And, in view 
of its need, it would seem reasonable that God should 
require, as an essential duty of a Christian life, that 
they should furnish money, according as he has pros- 
pered them ; and that those who have but one talent, 
or but two mites to bestow, should be forbidden to 
bury, or withhold, as surely as are those who have 
the most ample amounts. So Inspiration indicates, 
enjoining the right use of ^^very little" (Luke xix. 
17), and directing to be "faithful in the unrighteous 

^ We have confidence that this statement, in regard to the 
majority out of the church, will not offend candid unconverted 
persons. We entreat them to read on, ponder motives, and set 
noble examples, as have individuals of their class, which may 
shame some professors of religion. 



20 A STRANGE THING. 

mammon — in that which is least," as -well as in 
"much." (Luke xvi. 10, 11.) Thus we find the 
principle is Divinely fixed without reference to the 
amount possessed. It extends to every cent which 
can be consistently spared for religious objects. 

Now, is it not at once strange and lamentable that 
this very duty of pecuniary bestowments, which we 
see lies at the foundation of means for the success of 
the gospel, as well as of other enterprises, and which 
is so clearly devolved upon church members, is, by 
perhaps the great majority of them, considered rather 
optional than obligatory ! Here, alas ! is the great 
secret of the tardy movement of Christianity over 
the earth. The secret is hid from the willingly blind. 
May there be no bolt from heaven upon delinquents, 
except one of gracious power, to start their consciences 
from deadly apathy ! 

While the lack of due beneficence is confessed by 
other respected churches, is it not as lamentably 
obvious in the Methodist Episcopal denomination? 
And you believe that this church was raised for a 
special and momentous mission in these last days. 
So great minds in other denominations have frankly 
conceded. This church is evidently as comprehensive 
and influential as any other, in the most promising 
territory of the earth. Has not this church a mission ? 
The question is asked with no design to underrate 



A DIFFICULTY. 21 

sister denominations. Each has a great work, and 
corresponding financial duties. 

You have therefore before your mind, not only the 
overthrow of the idol mammon, but the removal of 
the most notable hindrance to so momentous a work 
as the salvation of souls ; and this hindrance existing 
in a church peculiarly qualified to extend that work. 
Surely your attention is due. 



CHAPTER II. 

ENLARGED BENEFICENCE A DUTY. 

Many hearts may shrink from the proper largeness 
of beneficence, as much as from the proper system. 
A penurious spirit needs quite as many motives to 
urge it over the difiiculty of the former, as of the 
latter. And how important would it be to the resources 
of Zion, if, under the head of largeness, many per- 
sons were induced to surrender at once what a past 
omission of system has allowed unduly to accumulate ! 

But we are not to lose sight of system. Our full 
duty is to bestow largely, not only at once, according 
to over-accumulated means, but largely upon system, 
from future gains, through life. System can thus 



22 THE VOICE OF INSPIRATION, 

preside over something of needed moment to the 
church ; and beneficencCj much liberalized, will more 
readily submit to be systematized. 

The distinctive duty of system shall subsequently 
have, it is hoped, due illustration and enforcement. 

1. Teachings of Scripture* 

To the Scriptures is our first appeal. They are too 
weighty to be omitted or delayed for something more 
novel. With every true believer in the Bible, the 
first and chief question in regard to any proposed 
4uty, is, and always should be, "What does the word 
of God say?" Other questions may follow; but 
motives can have imperative weight only as they rest 
upon Scripture grounds. 

How should we suppose that Divine Revelation 
would treat the goods of this world, and their repre- 
sentative, money — the sacrificing of which is, as we 
have seen, an indispensable means to the spread of 
salvation ? Certainly, in a way to draw their possess- 
ors to cheerful and liberal contributions. Let us 
see : — 

(1.) Riches belong to Grod. " The earth is the 
Lord's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they 
that dwell therein." " For every beast of the forest 
is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills." " The 
silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the Lord 
of Hosts." 

(2.) Thei/ are Divinely/ committed to man, and he 



THE VOICE OE INSPIRATION. 23 

must render a steward's account. " And thou say in 
thine heart, my power and the might of mine hand 
hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remem- 
ber the Lord thy God ; for it is he that giveth thee 
power to get wealth." " The Lord maketh poor, and 
maketh rich." " Both riches and honor come of thee." 
"If, therefore, ye have not been faithful in the 
unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust 
the true riches?" 

(3.) It is essential to the steward's piety that he 
make liberal donations for his fellows who suffer 
merely temporal want. " Thou shalt not harden thy 
heart, nor shut thy hand from thy poor brother ; but 
thou shalt open thy hand wide unto him." "The 
righteous showeth mercy, and giveth." "The right- 
eous considereth the cause of the poor." " Withhold 
not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in 
the power of thine hand to do it." " Say not unto 
thy neighbor. Go and come again, and to-morrow I 
will give; when thou hast it by thee." "He that 
honoreth his Maker hath mercy on the poor." " Give 
to him that needeth." "Whoso hath this world's 
good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth 
up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth 
the love of God in him?" 

In view of such directions to temporal aid, how 
evidently is beneficence obligatory, when demanded 
by spiritual destitution ! 

(4.) Blessings for time and eternity encourage to 
faithful henefieence, " He that giveth unto the poor 
shall not lack." "Trust in the Lord and do good; 



24 THE VOICE OF INSPIRATION. 

SO shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt 
be fed." '' Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou 
shalt find it after many days." '' He that hath pity 
upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord ; and that which 
he hath gfyen will he pay him again." ''He that 
hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed." ^' There is 
that scattereth and yet increaseth." ''The liberal 
soul shall be made fat : and he that watereth shall be 
watered also himself." "If thou draw out thy soul 
to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul, then shall 
thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the 
noon-day, and the Lord shall guide thee continually, 
and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy 
bones, and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and 
like a spring of water, whose waters fail not." " Give, 
and it shall be given unto you ; good measure, pressed 
down, and shaken together, and running over, shall 
men give into your bosom." "Do good and lend, 
hoping for nothing again ; and your reward shall be 
great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest." 
" When thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, 
the lame, the blind ; and thou shalt be blessed ; for 
thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the 
just." "Make to yourselves friends of the mammon 
of unrighteousness ; that when ye fail, they may re- 
ceive you into everlasting habitations." 

(5.) Riches retained^ can secure no real advantage 
to the unfaitlifid steivard^ hut must 2^ut him in great 
jeopardy, " He that loveth silver shall not be satis- 
fied with silver ; nor he that loveth abundance, with 
increase." "Then I looked upon all the works that 



THE VOICE OF INSPIRATION. 25 

my hands had wrought, and behold all was vanity 
and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under 
the sun.'' "For what hath man of all his labor and 
of the vexation of his heart wherein he hath labored 
under the sun? For all his days are sorrows, and 
his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the 
night." " The abundance of the rich will not suffer 
him to sleep." " Riches certainly make themselves 
wings ; they fly away." " There is that maketh him- 
self rich, yet hath nothing." "In the revenues of 
the wicked is trouble." " He that is greedy of gain 
troubleth his own house." "Riches profit not in the 
day of wrath." " There is a sore evil, namely, riches 
kept for the owners thereof to their hurt." " Their 
silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them 
in the day of the wrath of the Lord." "He that 
hideth his eyes from the poor shall have many a 
curse." "Woe unto them that join house to house, 
that lay field to field." "The care of this world, 
and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word." 
" The rich man also died, and was buried ; and in 
hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments." " Co- 
vetousness, let it not be once named among you, as 
becometh saints." "Be not deceived; nor thieves, 
nor covetous, shall inherit the kingdom of God." 
" They that will be rich fall into temptation and a 
snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which 
drown men in destruction and perdition." 

2. Impressive examples. 

In darker dispensations the people were drawn to 
a liberal imparting of worldly goods, as if by example 
3 



26 ANCIENT CUSTOMS. 

to prepare the way for the pecuniary sacrifices need- 
ful for the final triumph of Christianity. Enlarged, 
as well as systematic, outlays were essential to the 
maintenance of the shadows ; shall we not act nobly 
for the substance ? 

(1.) In the Patriarchal dispensation^ the ceremonies 
of religion cost something. Neither Cain nor Abel 
kept all he acquired. (Gen. iv. 3, 4.) Abram sub- 
mitted to expenditure. (Gen. xiv. 20.) There was 
expense in Job's time. (Job xxxi. 16, 20, and xlii. 
8.) Jacob consecrated a share of all. (Gen. xxviii. 
22.) 

(2.) The Mosaic dispensation suggests to us no 
stinted beneficence. It should not be objected that, 
when so many types and shadows were to be supported, 
expenditure was more demanded than in the Christian 
dispensation, unless it can be proved that types are 
more deserving than antitypes and substances; for 
we see that these last do not prevail upon earth, but 
in connection with monetary sacrifices. Must it not, 
then, be a singularly ungrateful return to God, if, 
because he has granted us a dispensation of more 
light and liberty, of more room to act cheerfully from 
the heart, without minute requisitions, we so shame- 
fully abuse our liberty as to fall short even of Mosaic 
beneficence ? 



IMPRESSIVE ITEMS. 27 

What does the darker dispensation present as a 
rebuke to covetous stewards for Christ ? " It seemed 
designed to set God's mark on the most common arti- 
cles of property ; so that, while employed in his fields, 
and with his flocks, and in gathering his harvests, each 
one should be constantly reminded of God's claims, 
and of his own obligation and dependence. In the 
first place, each one was required to give the first 
fruits, both of his flocks and of his field. The 
first fruits of the harvest were, by custom, the six- 
tieth part of the whole. Then money was to be paid 
as the ransom of the first-born male child. Then, 
in reaping, the corners of the field were to be left for 
the poor ; here, also, custom defined the requirement 
to be a sixtieth part of the whole. Then whatever 
fell from the reaper's hand belonged to the poor. 
Then every seventh year all the fields were to be left 
untilled, to produce spontaneously for the poor. Then 
a tenth part of all the products of the field was to be 
given to the Levites. Then there were trespass-ofier- 
ings, sin-ofi*erings, and specified portions of most of 
all the sacrificed animals, devoted to the priesthood 
and Levites. Then every seventh year all debts were 
to be remitted. And the three yearly journeys to 
Jerusalem, which were required of all the males, at 
the festivals, must have been no small tax. Added 
to these were the half-shekels for the sanctuary, and 



28 MORE THAN ENOUGH. 

abundant hospitalities and gifts for the poor. So that 
a conscientious Hebrew could hardly have spent less 
than one-third of his income in religious and charita- 
ble gifts.'" 

And it should be remembered that there was not 
only a steady current of liberal outlays, but that there 
were at once cheerful and very large contributions as 
for the tabernacle and temple, on occasions less impor- 
tant than the one in our generation. We enjoy the 
peculiar privilege of pointing all nations to a spiritual 
tabernacle, to a more glorious temple of the Lord. 
Let us be provoked by the appropriations to the Jew- 
ish tabernacle and temple. "And the Lord spake 
unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, 
that they bring me an offering ; of every man that 
giveth it willingly with his heart, shall ye take my 
offering.'' 

" The children of Israel brought a willing offering 
unto the Lord, every man and woman whose heart 
made them willing to bring, for all manner of work 
which the Lord had commanded." (Ex. xxxv. 29.) 
^' And they brought yet unto him free offerings every 
morning — and all the wise men that wrought, spake 
unto Moses, saying. The people bring much more than 
enough. So the people were restrained from bringing." 
(Ex. xxxvi. 3, 7.) 

^ " The Divine Law of Beneficence," by Eev. P. Cooke ; pp. 
15, 16. 



*A WONDERFUL AMOUNT. 29 

In regard to the gifts in the precious metals on this 
occasion, Mr. Bagster, on Ex. xxxviii. 24, says, ^' If we 
follow the estimation of the learned Dean Prideaux, 
the value of the twenty-nine talents and 730 shekels 
of gold will be $880,663.45. The value of the silver 
contributed by 603,550 Israelites, at half a shekel 
per man, will amount to $200,982.24. The value of 
the 70 talents, 2400 shekels of brass, will be $2281.48. 
Total value, $1,083,927.17. 

Mark the cheerful manner and wonderful amount 
of donations for the temple ! " Then the people re- 
joiced, for that they offered willingly, because with 
perfect heart they offered willingly to the Lord : and 
David the king also rejoiced with great joy — and said, 
Blessed be thou. Lord God of Israel, our father for 
ever and ever. Both riches and honor come of thee. 
Who am I, and what is my people, that we should 
be able to offer so willingly after this sort ? for all 
things come of thee, and of thine own have we given 
thee." (1 Chron. xxix. 9, 14.) The value of the gold 
and silver furnished on this occasion, according to cal- 
culations which may be examined by the incredulous 
at the close of Dr. A. Clarke's comments on 2 Chron. 
ix., is, in British currency, 1,223,629,343 pounds, 11 
shillings and 8J pence. Let the reader contrast this 
amount with the present contributions of the church. 

(3.) Look to the early Christian Church. It was 
3* 



30 AN INCITEMENT. , 

filled with the Holy Ghost. Correct examples were set. 
The Great Teacher had not been silent in regard to 
earthly goods. He had said, " Give to him that asketh 
thee.'' ^'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon 
earth." " Sell that ye have, and give alms ; provide 
yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the 
heavens that faileth not." The first Christians did 
not interpret such teachings too loosely, nor give 
merely an intellectual assent. They " sold their pos- 
sessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as 
every man had need." (Acts ii. 45.) And with the 
primitive Christians there was more than a temporary 
action under pentecostal influences. Some time after, 
St. Paul, in an epistle to the Romans, said, " Now I 
go unto Jerusalem to minister unto the saints, for it 
hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make 
a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at 
Jerusalem." (Rom. xv. 26.) And, subsequently, in 
an epistle to the Corinthians, the same apostle set 
forth the Macedonian liberality as an incitement. 
"Moreover, brethren, we do you to wit af the grace 
of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia, how 
that in a great trial of affliction, the abundance of 
their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the 
riches of their liberality. For to their power, I bear 
record, yea, and beyond their power, they were willing 
of themselves; praying us with much entreaty that 



VOLUNTABY POVERTY. 81 

we would receive the gift/' (2 Cor. viii. 1, 4.) How 
does this contrast with some modern customs in the 
church! Observe, there was no declining because 
they were not wealthy. They drew no excuse from 
*^ deep poverty.'* They were not so fearful of giving 
"beyond their power" as to be sure not to give up to 
it. There was no grudging; ^Hhey were willing." 
They did not wait to be urged by others ; " they were 
willing of themselves." Much less did they wait to 
be urged with great entreaty, before rendering the 
gift. They prayed, says the apostle, "with much 
entreaty that we would receive the gift." 

Awhile after the apostolic days, not only did Chris- 
tians take "joyfully the spoiling of" their "goods," 
in times of persecution; but they held fasts, and 
devoted to beneficence what they saved in food. Some 
wealthy converts sold all their possessions, or held 
them as much at the service of the poor as of them- 
fielves.^ There were even instances of the poor sell- 
ing themselves into bondage to free others** 

Why should not the inspired teachings respecting 
worldly goods be acted upon to the end of time ? If 
their force can be restricted to particular times and 
places, cannot that of any other Scripture precept ? 
Are any based upon more general principles ? 

* Cave's " Primitive Christianity/' p. 292. 

* Clement's EpLat. ad Cor. c. 55. 



32 A MODERN WONDER. 

(4.) In modern days, among the few instances of a 
return to the primitive standard of giving, behold the 
course of a special instrument of God. That the case 
may not seem overstated by denominational partiality, 
take a quotation from a writer in a sister church : 
" Early in life, John Wesley said that he had known 
but four men whose piety had not suffered from their 
becoming rich. Longer observation led him to make 
no exception. His own case, however, may be alleged 
as an example of the power of grace to withstand 
the withering influence of increasing wealth. His 
income at first was thirty pounds a year. Of this he 
reserved two pounds for charity. The next year it 
was sixty pounds. Still using but twenty-eight for 
himself, he employed thirty-two pounds in charity. 
And when his income amounted to a hundred and 
twenty pounds, he lent ninety-two pounds to the Lord, 
and lived himself on twenty-eight, as at first. At 
his decease, his whole property was found to consist 
of his clothes, his books, and a carriage, although he 
had probably given away more than a hundred thou- 
sand dollars. Did the root of all evil find no more 
congenial soil in the hearts of other men than it did 
in that of John Wesley, how different would be the 
gtate of the world V'^ 

* "The Mission of the Church; or Systematic Beneficence, 
by Rev. E. A. Lawrence/' pp. 77, 7^. 



A SEASON OF LIGHT. 33 

Would It not be reasonable to suppose — if God were 
to raise up a man to be specially instrumental in 
giving the work of salvation an impetus over the 
earth ; to be his instrument in the origination of a 
branch of the church designed to occupy no secondary 
place in adaptation to the world's wants — that such a 
man would set the right example in the momentous 
duty of beneficence ? This John Wesley did. 

There have been other exemplars in modem times 
— some stars of various magnitudes seen in dark 
heavens — such as Hale, Boyle, Tillotson, Hammond, 
Annesley, Watts, Doddridge, Baxter, Mrs. Rowe, the 
Countess of Huntingdon, Budgett, Cobb, Smith, Frey, 
Mrs. Garrett. Some of these will receive further 
attention, when we come to the more direct inculca- 
tion of system in beneficence. 

3. Your consecration to Grod at conversion^ and 
your subsequent religious experience^ suggest the duty 
(^enlarged beneficence. 

When first blessed, had you not just given yourself, 
and in spirit your all, to Him ? This was a necessary 
condition. Can you expect to retain spiritual health- 
fulness if now you practically refuse to hold your 
earthly goods at the Divine disposal? Remember 
your frame of heart since, in seasons of special bap- 
tism from above. While the light of the Spirit was 
ilhining in you, and showing you the condition of the 



84 REAL NEED. 

world around you, and also something of what heaven 
is, then money lost its charm. Could you have been 
approached just then with the urgent claims of a suf- 
fering cause — one clearly belonging to God — you 
would have apprehended the true standard for giving. 
The Holy Ghost would have guided you. He is ready 
to come again. Be entreated to look for another 
baptism ; and, when it is upon you, to act at once, 
before grieving the Spirit, and losing both the light 
and the inclination for due largeness in giving. 



CHAPTER III. 

ENLARGED BENEFICENCE SUGGESTED BY REAL NEED.' 

1. The Churchy in the prosecution of her holy enter- 
prises, may he more needy than your family. 

Beware of retrenchment in beneficence, from a 
prevalent '^prudent'' forecast in regard to temporal 
wants. The sensitive circumspection, the lynx-eye 
here, may have too much of an earthly direction. 
Temporal forecast is lawful to a certain extent. 
But is the great danger that of its falling short ? or 
going too far? We can see at once by observing 
which of two things is the more common — for families 
to pass from this life having possessed temporal goods 



A CHOICE. 35 

beyond real need, or for enterprises of our beloved 
Zion to be begging and lean, from stinted allowances ? 
Here is a question for heads of families who would 
be prudent for eternal, as well as temporal interests. 
It is a question fully solved by the great Head of the 
Church. 

2. Religious donations can secure far letter results 
than the retention of tvealth for heirs. 

As to laying up "well'' for those you love, with 
merely temporal ends in view, can God approve, while 
a good share of the accumulations, without any one/s 
being left to suffer, might be sent forth in streams of 
holy influence upon the spiritual and eternal destinies 
of your fellow-beings ? Keep in view that, from your 
beneficence, there would arise no impediment to the 
spiritual comforts, or to the eternal safety of your 
loved ones. You cannot say, as in God's presence, 
that your family will derive spiritual prosperity or 
safety from supplies or bequests of the goods of this 
world. But your impartial judgment leaves you in 
no doubt that money disbursed through the financial 
channels of the church can, and does, secure precious 
blessings to immortal souls. Therefore, two things 
before you are set against each other, between which 
you must choose, for hesitancy is leaving things to 
continue in the wrong course : the temporal good of 
your family or heirs ; and the influences for good upon 



86 WHAT WILL HEIRS THINK? 

the eternal destinies of souls. How much does the 
one exceed the other ! How far will eternity surpass 
a lifetime on earth ! How much will heavenly joys 
excel a satisfaction in possession of uncertain riches ! 

Satan may suggest the possibility of your heirs 
bestowing liberally, from what you may leave. But 
your good sense cannot allow this possibility as a set- 
off to your giving certainly ; and to your giving sooner 
than can your heirs, and thus securing far greater 
final results, since the enterprises of Zion are so pecu- 
liarrly cumulative — the crop of each year being seed 
for the next. Surely, you would not have the gospel 
field shamefully defrauded by waiting for heirs to 
sow for you, even if you could know that, after your 
decease, there would be no danger of the seed being 
wasted or locked up. 

Dread not any upbraiding from your heirs. Even 
should they at first speak a little harshly in haste, 
they will not, upon candid reflection, respect you the 
less for your aiming to glorify God, without really 
injuring them. Indeed, may we not believe that they 
will have the nobleness to rejoice on earth (as they 
certainly may in heaven, upon meeting souls saved 
through your liberality) in the substitution of the 
eternal bliss and glories of others for their own ques- 
tionable eclat and gratification, arising from the pos* 



SELF-DENIAL AND SAFETY. 87 

session of more money for an hour upon the stage of, 
mortality ? 

If you leave all to your heirs, death will soon sep- 
arate them from it. Then, rest assured, as they 
arrive at eternal conclusions, they will not think the 
more highly of you. 

We would not have endured the cross of thus 
pressing this point, were it not for a notable evil, pre- 
valent as it is delicate, and often passed over or too 
lightly touched. 

In order that you may offer to God more largely, 
will you not submit to some settled habits of self- 
denial for yourself and family, in diet, or apparel, 
or something else ? To what did the Saviour submit 
for others ! for you ! What privations have many 
of his followers endured for others ! for you ! How 
much beyond what is now suggested as your duty ! 
Each reader is entreated to consider, patiently and 
candidly, this proposal of self-denial. A way is 
open for the poor to give something, and for the 
wealthy to bestow more munificently than they other- 
wise could. How trifling would be the pains of self- 
denial for a family, even in a lifetime, compared with 
the pains of one soul in hell for ever ! But many 
might be saved. And the self-denial might remove 
from the household impediments in the way to heaven. 
It might remove little, but busy and fashionable, 
4 



38 SOMETHINa TO BE PONDERED. 

agents for ^'the lust of the flesh," "the lust "of the 
eye," or "the pride of life," which drive away "the 
love of the Father." (1 John ii. 15, 16.) 

Let us here ponder some remarks of Mr. Wesley, 
taken from his sermon on the use of money : — 

" Having gained all you can, by honest wisdom, 
and unwearied diligence, the second rule of Christian 
prudence is, ' Save all you can.' Do not throw the 
precious talent into the sea ; leave that folly to heathen 
philosophers. Do not throw it away in idle expenses, 
which is just the same as throwing it into the sea. 
Expend no part of it merely to gratify the desire of 
the flesh, the desire of the eye, or the pride of life. 

" Do not waste any part of so precious a talent 
merely in gratifying the desires of the flesh ; in pro- 
curing the pleasures of sense of whatever kind ; par- 
ticularly in enlarging the pleasure of tasting. I do 
not mean, avoid gluttony and drunkenness only : an 
honest heathen would condemn these. But there is a 
regular, reputable kind of sensuality, an elegant epi- 
curism, which does not immediately disorder the sto- 
mach, nor (sensibly at least) impair the understanding ; 
and yet (to mention no other efiects of it now) it can- 
not be maintained without considerable expense. Cut 
ofi" all this expense ! Despise delicacy and variety, 
and be content with what plain nature requires. 

"Do not waste any part of so precious a talent 



SOMETHING TO BE PONDERED. 39 

merely in gratifying the desire of the eye, by super- 
fluous or expensive apparel, or by needless ornaments. 
Waste no part of it in curiously adorning your houses ; 
in superfluous or expensive furniture ; in costly pictures, 
painting, gilding, books ; in elegant rather than use- 
ful gardens. Let your neighbors, who know nothing 
better, do this: 'Let the dead bury their dead.' But 
^ what is that to thee V says our Lord : ' follow thou 
me.' Are you willing ? Then you are able so to do. 

" Lay out nothing to gratify the pride of life, to 
gain the admiration or praise of men. This motive 
of expense is frequently interwoven with one or both 
of the former. Men are expensive in diet, or apparel, 
or furniture, not barely to please their appetite, or to 
gratify their eye, or their imagination, but their vanity 
too. *So long as thou doest well unto thyself, men 
will speak good of thee.' So long as thou art clothed 
' in purple and fine linen, and farest sumptuously every 
day,' no doubt many will applaud thy elegance of taste, 
thy generosity and hospitality. But do not buy their 
applause so dear. Rather be content with the honor 
that Cometh from God. 

" Who would expend anything in gratifying these 
desires, if he considered that to gratify them is to 
increase them ? Nothing can be more certain than 
this : daily experience shows, the more they are in- 
dulged, they increase the more. Whenever, therefore, 



40 A DISFAVOR. 

you expend anything to please your taste, or other 
senses, you pay so much for sensuality. When you 
lay out money to please your eye, you give so much 
for an increase of curiosity — for a stronger attach- 
ment to those pleasures which perish in the using. 
While you are purchasing anything which men use to 
applaud, you are purchasing more vanity. Had you 
not, then, enough of vanity, sensuality, curiosity, 
before? Was there need of any addition? And 
would you pay for it, too ? What manner of wisdom 
is this ? Would not the literally throwing your money 
into the sea be a less mischievous folly ? 

" And why should you throw away money upon your 
children, any more than upon yourself, in delicate food, 
in gay or costly apparel, in superfluities of any kind ? 
Why should you purchase for them more pride or lust, 
more vanity, or foolish and hurtful desires? They 
do not want any more; they have enough abeady; 
nature has made ample provision for them ; why should 
you be at further expense to increase their temptations 
and snares, and to pierce them through with many 
sorrows?"^ 

If you pray for Divine influence upon your family, 
and fully and lovingly explain to them the great 
reasons for saving by self-denial, you may expect 
them to submit cheerfully ; or, at the worst, to treat 

^ Wesley's Works, vol. i. p. 445. 



A PICTURE. 41 

you with a disfavor far more endurable than that of 
your Maker. These are plain words ; yet can they 
ofiFend your better judgment ? 

3. The condition of half or more of the world^ 
under Paganism^ is enough to rouse your sympathies 
to all possible liberality. 

"Bereft of the idea of one all perfect and controll- 
ing Divinity ; with no standard of truth and right — 
no guiding demontsration, leading to a comparison of 
the false with the true, the malignant with the good 
— the appetites and passions rising into supremacy 
and converting the enfeebled remains of moral sense 
into auxiliaries of debasement, what can Paganism be 
but one ' mighty labor of human depravity to confirm 
its dominion?' Vedas and Shasters, filled with inter- 
minable genealogies, and transmigrations of the human 
soul, and of male and female divinities, are its holy 
books, containing neither precept nor example of 
moral excellence. Brahma, Vishnoo, and Siva, the 
consecrated patrons of the vices, are its chief deities. 
Vain theorists, skilful impostors, and lascivious 
sorcerers, are its only guides and intercessors. Par- 
ricide, infanticide, sutteeism, self-torture, laborious 
pilgrimages, and obscene rites, are its most approved 
forms of religious service. Caste, with its impassa- 
ble walls, fixing unalterably the station of each 

individual, annihilates all motive to improvement 
4* 



Mt AN APPEAL. 

in the lower classes, and gives to the higher free 
course in vice and crime, by securing them against 
deposition or disgrace. ' The entire empire of poly- 
theism/ says Harris, 'is a realm of diabolical do- 
minion. It assembles its votaries only to blaspheme 
the name of God ; erects its temples only to attract 
the lightning of the impending cloud on their devoted 
heads ; calls them around its altars, only that, in the 
very act of supposed atonement, they may complete 
their guilt ; and gives them a pretended revelation, 
only that Hhey should believe a lie.' And the worst 
feature of all is, that in the systems of Paganism 
there is no element of improvement, no principle of 
progress, except in the road from bad to worse. 
Time only deepens the gloom, and legitimizes among 
them the processes of ruin. Even the moral senti- 
ments, that here and there shone out of ancient 
heathenism, like stars in deep night, and the skill 
and taste apparent in the temples and divinities of 
Greece and Rome, find no place in modern Paganism. 
It has no recuperative, but only a degrading and 
destructive power. And does no Macedonian cry, 
coming up from such an Aceldama, make its appeal 
to Christian hearts for some more vigorous and sus- 
tained beneficent effort ? Behold poor, abused, bleed- 
ing Africa, pillaged and plundered by lawless and 
inhuman marauders, yielding up her tawny, barbarous 






SATANIC ARRAY. M 

sons to still more barbarous strangers from Christian 
lands. See Asia, ^wholly given to idolatry/ her 
miserable poor crushed under the heel of an oppres- 
sive and polluted priesthood ; Asia, the cradle of the 
race, torn by intestine feuds and foreign aggressions, 
pouring her dense population of wretched and guilty 
spirits into the abyss of woe ; Asia, with no Bible, 
and no Sabbath ; with no Saviour but the Ganges and 
her countless idols; with no worship but that of 
demons and reptiles, or monsters of vice ; and with 
no morality except what hastens the desolating work, 
and hurries human souls to perdition — how does she 
lift up her imploring voice, and call on us for a de- 
liverer! 

* Oh, could I picture out the full effect 
Of that soul-withering power, Idolatry, 
I'd write a page which, whoso dared to read, 
His eye, instead of tears, in crimson drops should bleed.' ''* 

For fellow-beings, in such a state, can we esteem 
any sacrifices too great which will still leave us with 
both the necessaries of this life, and the riches of 
gospel grace ? 

4. Consider the condition of the major part of the 
rest of mankind^ infatuated hy false systems^ which 
have interposed between Paganism and vital Chris- 
tianity. 

* " The Mission of the Church/' &c., pp- 29, 31. 



44 A DESIRABLE CHANGE. 

Satan has arrayed under various banners of 
heterodoxy, of perversion of truth, and of carnal 
license, the masses of unbelieving, .apostate, or hypo- 
critical men, not known as Pagans. They have been 
marshalled by Satanic skill into Mohammedan, Papal, 
Mormon, or other ranks. Their dogmas and forms 
acknowledge just enough of the true God, enough of 
Christ, enough of truth, to quiet the misgivings of 
their deluded adherents, and to be, to the view of 
Pagans, more or less confounded with real Chris- 
tianity, and therefore a greater occasion of perplexity 
to such of them as inquire after the truth. 

And fiendish skill seems to have interposed every 
shade of error for Protestant, as well as other lands, 
from twilight to starless midnight. In many instances, 
strong though misguided intellects are groping in 
submission to priestly authority, human tradition, or 
their own reason. Will you not give money freely 
for domestic as well as foreign missions, to reach souls 
dying under these ruinous systems? At the same 
time, you will be instrumentally changing these souls 
from opposers to the spread of vital religion, to acute 
and mighty helpers in reaching the miserable heathen. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ENLARGED BENEFICENCE SUGGESTED BY THE WORTHI- 
NESS OF CHURCH ENTERPRISES, AND THE WORTH- 
LESSNESS OF MONEY IN ITSELF. 

1. The worthiness of church enterprises. 

Our liberality cannot exceed the dmrch's ability to 
use money to advantage. What department of exer- 
tion is in danger of financial repletion ? If such a 
one could be found, some of the others might receive 
the surplus, and still have need of a thousandfold 
more. "What glorious evidence would rapidly be 
given of the church's capacity for enlargement, if all 
her sons and daughters would, at once, render all the 
pecuniary aid in their power ! And what large 
amounts must be given before she will have accom- 
plished what is possible to be done for the descendants 
of Adam on this globe ! While a comparatively small 
number are reached, are we at the point for pausing? 

(1.) The Missionary department in the church of 
your choice, for both foreign and domestic aggression, 
is indeed fully justified to your mind by the state of 
the unchristianized masses noticed in the last chapter, 
and by your belief, without disrespect to other denomi- 
nations, that this church is not secondary to any in 

ability to inculcate truth. 

(45) 



46 TWO GREAT DEMANDS. 

(2.) The Bible cause, of course, rests on the same 
ground of worthiness as the Missionary. We believe 
that, fully to possess the gospel, people not only 
muT/, but musty possess and read the Bible. 

(3.) The Tract Society/. If money be furnished to 
carry out its plans, none can doubt that saving light 
will be darted into many souls which are inaccessible 
by other means. And it should be remembered that 
this society contemplates a great subserviency to the 
Missionary cause, in timely issues of books in various 
languages. But there is a great mission inside of the 
church and her congregations in our own land. For- 
merly a minister here had less minute pastoral care, 
less imperative demand for study ; and he could better 
succeed as both preacher and colporteur. Now, with 
only two eyes, two hands, and the ability to go in but 
one direction at a time, he can do well only as 
preacher and pastor. Hence, the tract enterprise, 
with its provision for diligent colporteurs, must have 
free course, or a lamentable defect will exist. Shall 
the church, as well as the multitudes under her influ- 
ence, be seriously, if not fatally, injured from " lack 
of knowledge?*' 

To remain firm in herself, and progressive in her 
achievements, there must be, in these times of restless 
taste for reading, steady instruction from books suited 
to her high spiritual characteristics. 



THE GREAT NURSERY. 47 

We live in times of novel, and exciting, and system- 
atic movements of Satan; of unsanctified science; of 
imposture pandering to the love of the marvellous ; 
and of monthly, weekly, and daily (including even 
Sabbath) issues of many an avaricious and corrupt 
press. And we live in times, not only of the proba- 
bility, but of the fact of the relaxation of religious 
strictness, and the adjustment of religious standards, 
for theory and practice, to sickly moral tastes. In 
such times the tract enterprise, in its new eflBciency, 
rises to the view, as truly deserving of much money, 
as the increased financial resources of these same 
times significantly suggest the bestowment of it. 

(4.) The Sunday School system. The mighty ten- 
dency of this for eternal good can be doubted by no 
one acquainted with its present healthfulness and 
increasing influence. If the cramping hand of avarice 
should retard its growth, and finally render it ineffi- 
cient, where, in a few years, will be the prosperous 
church? Where, without a transfer to heathen 
grounds ? But, with avarice so active as to under- 
rate Sunday Schools, we could hope for no such trans- 
fer. Then, let us watch the nursery of Zion's future. 
Children will be trained up in some way. Let us be 
awake ; and in as easy a sacrifice as that of money, 
open wide one hand, while with the other we lead 



48 A RESTRICTION AND AN INTIMATION. 

children to Sunday School, and open the book of 
instruction. 

(5.) Church-building^ and the payment of church- 
debts, deserve hearty and enlarged beneficence. Mo- 
ney, in this field, is the only thing needed to prevent, 
at some points, lamentable restriction, if not extinc- 
tion, of influence. And how much do church-debts, 
in some congregations, conflict with the financial 
claims of various church enterprises ! How they 
furnish real or pretended excuses for small donations, 
or for none ! And how some societies creep along, 
almost crushed by opposing influences, simply from 
the want of a suitable house for worship, or of one to 
which absentees can resort without hearing again and 
again of the old debt ! 

(6.) The educational department should not be over- 
looked. In the very rise of Methodism, scholastic 
attainments were divinely honored in the selection of 
its founder. From this we may infer the propriety 
of a liberal education in spreading gospel truth, even 
in our own language. And so surely as there is now 
no supernatural gift of tongues in the church, the 
common sense of every man must acknowledge the 
necessity of learned men, as missionaries, to translate 
the Scriptures from the original into heathen languages, 
and to meet the scientific queries and objections of 
infidels and pagans. Would, then, no obstacle arise 



THE SUPPORT OP THE MINISTRY. 49 

to the work of spreading scriptural holiness among 
the nations, if short-sighted and penurious prejudices 
against raising up learned men should remove the 
present, or prevent the creation of still needed educa- 
tional privileges in the church of your choice ? Would 
it be as well, if other churches alone should furnish 
competent missionaries ? And would it be as well, if, 
only under the influence of other denominations, uni- 
versities, colleges, and seminaries, should be endowed 
so as to present inviting aspects to wealthy students, 
and charitable aspects to the indigent ? From the 
indigent, not less surely than from the wealthy, there 
has been and there may be a Divine selection of effi- 
cient men for the church. 

(7.) The ohligation to contribute to the support of 
the ministry^ is generally acknowledged. ^^Even so 
hath the Lord ordained, that they which preach the 
gospel should live of the gospel." (1 Cor. ix. 14.) He 
whose head and heart have the care of souls would 
certainly find as much to interfere with his calling, in 
the perplexity of temporal want, or in an additional 
business through the week, as would the physician, 
lawyer, or public instructor, in his profession. 

Under this head may be urged the duty of support- 
ing disabled ministers^ and the widows and orphans 
of the departed. This support is needful to secure 

cheerful and unperplexed service of men now in the 
5 



50 RELIEF OF CHURCH MEMBERS. 

gospel work. The laborers must be depressed or 
pressed out of service, if obliged to apprehend, from 
neglect of the already disabled or bereaved, the 
danger of future want for themselves, or surviving 
loved ones. And such support is necessary to the 
honor and saving influence of the church with the 
world. Even the world will love its own. 

(8.) Relief of church members in temporal want 
must work with equal certainty for the honor and 
right influence of Christianity. And if suflSciently 
practised, some members might be inclined to main- 
tain a closer fellowship and a more cordial co-operation 
with the church : there might be less expenditure of 
their time, ardor, and money, in certain societies 
which promise temporal aid. 

There may be discerned in each department we 
have noticed — as doubtless in any other which may 
hereafter be instituted in the wisdom of the church — 
a real connection with the other springs of life-giving 
action upon perishing souls. Aid to one may increase 
the movements of others. Wheels join wheels in the 
ecclesiastical enginery. Yet there may be an intelli- 
gent distribution of pecuniary aid. Some wheels are 
larger, and need more than others. 

2. The worthlessness of money in itself. 

(1.) Money in itself, unintelligent, inanimate, is, 
indeed, what a spirit cannot commune with, or feed 



PAINFUL SUSPICIONS. 51 

upon. Except a mere miser — who is so far insane as 
not to realize that it is only dead matter — no one is 
charmed by wealth, but as it is seen, like the rainbow, 
in the distance. When the supposed point of termi- 
nation is attained, cold mist surrounds the pursuer ; 
and if any bright colors remain, they are still in 
advance: *^A larger amount of money — -another 
chase for gains to be hoarded,'' whispers Mammon, 
or rather Satan, who has, by this time, if not before, 
fully added his influence. 

(2.) To some persons, wealth has peculiar attractive- 
ness in its power to draw the smiles of their fellows. 
But observe, there can be n& enjoyment from these 
smiles, except as there is confidence that they come 
from the heart. And though an affluent man may 
have sincere friends, yet, instead of wealth's securing 
more happiness in friendship, it has just the contrary 
tendency. In attaining or retaining riches, a man 
learns much of human nature, and his shrewd heart 
often fails to reciprocate bows and expressions of 
regard. There is a chilling uncertainty as to the 
state of surrounding hearts. There are painful sus- 
picions of some self-interest lurking under bland 
approaches to him, a man of wealth and influence. 
The poor man is better ofi*. He may rest with confi- 
dence in the sincerity of a narrow circle of smiling 
friends, while the rich man may range a wide circle 



62 A SNARE. 



1 



in painful suspense. This view regards the mere pos- 
session of wealth. A man, it is true, may control 
much of this world's goods, as a faithful steward, and 
enjoy sweet confidence in many smiling friends. But 
it is his moral worth, with the right use of his means, 
which inspires the true esteem ; and the beams of 
that esteem fall more freely and warmly upon his 
heart, as he narrows his means by wide beneficence. 

(3.) Wealth can exert a subtle and baneful charm 
upon its hoarding possessor, by insinuating the idea 
that it may secure the pleasures of enlarged charity, 
some time in the future^ when swelled to a large 
extent. Satan's snare here is to keep the business 
man from giving^ until intellectual and moral habits 
of grasping are formed and confirmed. The snare is 
laid under pretence of future satisfaction in loosening 
the hold and scattering the more for having grasped so 
much. " Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight 
of any bird." (Prov. i. 17.) Will a man be less cau- 
tious than a bird ? How plain is it that, so far from 
the hoarding of wealth facilitating the exercise of 
charity, or preparing for pleasure therein, it does not 
even allow its possessor an undiminished zest for 
giving, according to his ability. It is the general 
law, that the more money men get, the less are they 
inclined to give, according to their increase of means. 
Many a man who, when saving but a few dollars 



II 



A HALLUCINATION. 53 

annually, has cheerfully contributed one-fourth of his 
gains, is pained, when he has attained to a large 
income, at the thought of bestowing in the same pro- 
portion ; although three-fourths, now kept for himself, 
would so abundantly exceed what once satisfied him. 
Aggravated reluctance to be duly liberal must ensue, 
if no habit of giving accompany the habit of grasping. 
We may expect no relaxation of the hold before death. 
Nay, death cannot touch the soul. And, strange as 
it may seem, even at death, in a hallucination analo- 
gous to that of the warrior who meets the sword that 
he may live in fame, the victim of covetousness feels 
as if he could remain upon earth in the persons of 
his heirs ; and instead of willing largely to Christ's 
causes, he leaves most or all of the possessions to his 
family. Therefore, " take heed, and beware of cove- 
tousness," under the plea of future practice and 
pleasure in beneficence. Give what you can as soon 
as possible, lest the money you lay up, if not your 
precious soul, be ultimately found out of Christ's 
kingdom. 

(4.) Riches and their possessor must inevitably 
part. If they do not "fly away'' from him, he must 
from them. Life here " is soon cut off, and we fly 
away." (Ps. xc. 10.) Then is it not wise, volunta- 
rily to surrender a liberal share previous to the time 

of inevitable separation from the whole ; and see that 

6* 



54 DIVINE LIBERALITY. 

share, before old age or death, productive of eternal 
blessings? If you delay even a little, you may 
hardly find time to "make to yourself friends of 
the mammon of unrighteousness." 



CHAPTER V. 

ENLARGED BENEFICENCE DEMANDED BY GRATITUDE 
AND SPIRITUAL PRUDENCE. 

1. Consider what Grod has given for your benefit^ 
and is disposed to give you hereafter. 

(1.) Temporal treasures are from Him. Your own 
labor cannot prevent them from being gifts. " For 
it is He that giveth thee power to get wealth." 
(Deut. viii. 18.) And are you not worth the more in 
consequence of your connection with Christianity ? 
What some say the church has cost them is perhaps 
not a tithe of what it has saved to them in the goods 
of this world. No Christian can tell from what gross 
sins of great pecuniary cost the gospel may have 
saved him : sins which would have reduced him to 
miserable want in a shortened earthly stay, as well as 
have sunk him to horrible want in eternity. 

(2.) But let us contemplate spiritual things^ and 
an unspeakable gift. If your Lord's causes in the 



AN AMAZING GIFT. 65 

present age cry to you "Give, give," and try your 
patience by their importunity, while you feel nearly 
or quite disposed to a half-echoing objection, " Give, 
give, is always the cry;" if this is so, do not forget 
•that your miserable condition in fallen humanity 
appealed most piteously unto God, with all the empha- 
sis of "give, give." And do not forget that God 
'listened in amazing love and patience, and conde- 
fscended to a sacrifice; not indeed in a steward's 
return of earthly goods, but in a free gift of some- 
thing transcendently higher in value and exclusively 
•His own. He thus listened, and attached to you a 
^saving chain, traceable back from him who was the 
direct instrument of your conversion, with many a 
link of pecuniary and other sacrifices, made by many 
a preacher and layman of noble deeds and missionary 
zeal in former ages of the church; a chain with no 
untried link, through lonely wastes of banishment, 
^deep waters, dark dungeons, deriding and malicious 
crowds, smitten by sharpened steel, passing through 
boiling caldrons, melted metals, and blazing piles of 
fagots, till, in amazingly agonizing exertions of a 
wonderful Being, with the sweating of blood and more 
than the sound of an earthquake, even the cry of 
^^JEloij eloi^ lama sabacthanij'' it was carried up to an 
acceptance at the throne of inflexible, yet propitiated 
justice, and fastened to a Divine purpose of grace ; 



56 A tTRANSCENDENT GIFT. 

a pillar of the diameter of the world and the height 
of the third heaven. " God so loved the world, that 
he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believ- 
eth in him should not perish, but have everlasting 
life." Here was a gift. Here was cost for our sake. 
Inspiration has presented it to us as a motive to 
"liberality'' in the goods of this world: "See that 
ye abound in this grace also ; for ye know the grace 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, 
yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through 
his poverty might be rich." (2 Cor. viii. 7, 9.) 

(3.) But God is ready to do more for you. Indeed, 
He has commenced doing it. Yet it is all in conse- 
quence of the great former gift. " He that spared 
not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, 
how shall he not with him also freely give us all 
things?" Among these let us proceed to contemplate 
the greatest. 

We tell the weeping penitent to say from the heart, 

" Here, Lord, I give myself away ; 
^Tis all that I can do.^' 

We acknowledge this enough for him. Can we not 
then be satisfied with what the Deity is doing, and is 
inclined to do for ever, when he vouchsafes Himself 
to us? "The Portion of Jacob." "He that over- 
cometh shall inherit all things, and I will be Ms Crod.'* 



AN INFINITE SURPLUS. 57 

He condescends ! — how should we dare to think it, 
had he not in substance said it ? — He condescends to 
give HIMSELF : it is all that he can do. He will 
dwell in you, and you may dwell in him for ever. 
Were he to set before you, as a portion, the whole 
range of his created universe, your progressive soul 
would arrive at a point beyond which there would be 
nothing new to attain. Your restless and undying 
aspirations would finally be mocked by a limit, and 
you find yourself for ever unsatisfied, and therefore 
unhappy. But, blessed be God, he has opened to 
you Himself. You may say, ^'Jle is the Portion of 
my soul.'' 

And observe that in all creation there can be 
nothing but what has come into existence under the 
fiat of God, without having had any germ extraneous 
to himself. If, therefore, you possess God, you have 
the fathomless and unfailing fountain of all that is 
curious, beautiful, sublime, or in any possible sense 
desirable. And, if the most transcendent created 
imagination in heaven should take the utmost flight 
for ravishing pictures, there would be in the Deity, 
not only resources for making the whole range real at 
a word, but an infinite surplus of inherent resources 
and capabilities. The most extended views of any 
creature, yea, of all creatures in the aggregate, would 
take in less than a little spray from the great Ocean. 



58 TWO EXTREMES. 

And God, as the source of the faculty of imagination, 
is indeed more than the ^sun which can impart bril- 
liancy to the ^pray. He is ever truly, as the ocean 
appears to the eye, boundless ; and ever truly, as the 
sun appears, too exuberant in light to be limited. If 
you possess God for ever, your spirit shall indeed 
never find a shore to its bliss — never find a limit to 
enrapturing search. 

From such a portion can you descend so low as 
even to the whole of creation ? Can you descend still 
lower, to any one department in the whole range ? 
Can you descend so low as to the department of mat- 
ter ! So low as to one earth in this department ! So 
low^ so very low^ as to one little heap of this earth — 
mere money — and hold it with idolatrous grasp ? 
What folly can be so astounding ! Look up to the 
true God, or down to the idol^ what an extreme of 
infatuation and guilt appears ! 

2. Crive money largely for the safety of your own, 
soul. 

Be not grieved by plain words. These pages have 
in view a most terrible delinquency. They must 
speak of the sword. If any one shrink from hearing 
of the sword, how will he shudder to feel it ! Yet, 
precious reader, we are speaking in a love which 
would not cry danger merely to terrify, though it can- 
not consent to cry peace to ruin. Will you not also, 



A DECISIVE CHOICE. 59 

in love to your soul, deal faithfully mth. it ? Then 
let your heart in strict candor decide whether you can 
continue to "have salt in yourself/' while you refuse 
to act as salt to your fellow men in a service most 
urgently demanded by the church, and by Providence, 
and by the Spirit presiding in both. And may you 
not find in eternity that God, in great wisdom, 
devolved upon you the duty of pecuniary appropria- 
tions to his cause, for your own safety ^ as well as that 
of others? Has he not required you to be salt to 
others in a way best preservative of salt in yourself? 
Something else might have been the most essential 
offering, had the surrender of it been as advantageous 
for the Christian himself. If the idolatry of Christen- 
dom naturally centres in money — which has aptly 
been called "condensed world," on account of its 
procuring power on the enticing things of the world — 
may not God tie you up here to conquer or be con- 
quered? With many men, doubtless, the opposing 
claims to the Divine may be reduced to those of such 
"condensed world,'' and the ultimately decisive 
choice of probation be simply between " God and 
mammon." 

Does not the sensitiveness of some professors of 
religion, under church-calls for money, indicate that 
their affections are set upon the idol ? If a vine bend 
and tremble with the jostling of a trellis-work, is it 



60 A DETECTION. 

not because the tendrils cling to it? Why, to so 
many persons, are " good sermons spoiled by money 
matters?" If in other things the preacher inculcate 
and enforce with warmth, and pungently urge to 
much increase of effort, it is " all very well — appro- 
priate work of the gospel ministry/' Why, then, the 
emotions of pain when faithfulness in the use of the 
unrighteous mammon is inculcated? The medical 
man finds the diseased part when the patient shrinks. 
W^here, then, is the disease of the church at the pre- 
sent day ? Is there no danger of death to one who 
refuses to let a cure commence with himself at this 
point? If the sensitiveness is equal to that of the 
eye, there should be the more alarm. '' And if thine 
eye offend thee, pluck it out : it is better for thee to 
enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than, 
having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire.'' 

3. Crive money largely^ in view of the comparative 
value of the soul. 

" For what is a man profited if he shall gain the 
whole world, and lose his own soul ? or what shall a 
man give in exchange for his soul ?" (Matt. xvi. 26.) 

The soul may be lost. Let us contemplate its 
worth, while tracing its wonderful faculties, as they 
will operate in heaven or hell. 

Think how much greater the sweep of the imagina- 
tion will be than in its widest excursions while on 



CONTRASTS. 61 

earth ! What joys in heaven, or what agonies in hell, 
must result from its flights, when it will bear upon its 
wings the new colors or materials for intense thought, 
gathered from death and from the judgment-fires ! 

Think of the faculty of the judgment in eternity, 
not as it will distinguish between lands or goods to 
be priced by gold, but as it will hold, in one scale, 
" a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory," 
and, in the other, " the pleasures of sin for a season ;" 
or as it will hold in one scale the burden of the 
damned, and in the other the daily religious crosses 
(amidst greater sweets), in a life-long way of escape. 

Think of the memory^ which can never really lose 
aught once presented to the mind — which, to one who 
may say to-day he does not recollect a circumstance, 
may to-morrow exhibit it clearly, proving that the 
fact was not really out of the mind. Think of this 
memory in the saved soul, freed from causes of for- 
getfulness, as, far on in eternal life, it will present 
for contemplation struggles against the love of money 
and other sins, kept up through a rightly improved 
probation, followed in contrast by the joys of heavenly 
rest ; or, think of this memory in the lost soul, as it 
will ever present a temporary excitement in chase for 
illusive phantoms of wealth, or something else, in an 
abused probation, followed in contrast by ages of 
darkest gloom, which will have rolled along for horrible 
6 



62 .A WONDERFUL PERCEPTION. 

retrospection. Think of the memory, thus present- 
ing a past and ever-lengthening vista from heaven or 
hell — a retrospection ever extended from the more 
and more advanced points of immediate conscious- 
ness in boundless eternity, away back to the first 
dawn of probation under an earthly father's roof! 
What a state of existence in which the soul is ever 
to be unfolding, as it were — how more and more 
transcending all earthly conceptions — not unrolling a 
blank, but a scroll written all over with characters of 
intense thought, ever extending, ever waving, ever 
glaring, in the light of God's countenance, or the 
fires of hell. This is the soul, in one of its faculties. 

How does your soul compare with gold in its 
nature ? its powers ? its value ? If you overlook the 
value of others, which your money can instrumentally 
save, surely you cannot find it hard to give money 
largely for the safety of your own soul ! If you will 
he selfish^ he selfish for your souly not for gold. 

Forget not that the soul, with all its powers, can 
have communion with God. It cannot only " feel after 
God," but ^'find him." (Acts xvii. 27.) There may 
be an indwelling of Him, a dwelling in Him, (1 John 
iv. 15,) a fellowship with Him, (1 John i. 3,) yea, 
oneness with Him. (John xvii. 21.) Here is indeed an 
elevation above perception, through nerves in the 
human bi)dy, as when the finger's end is upon money. 



A LIMITED VIEW. 63 

And the soul cannot only enjoy God for eveVj but 
increasingly for ever. The more that is known of a 
charming object, the more it is loved. And the more 
the faculties are exercised upon any unexhausted 
source of growth, there is not merely a steady acquisi- 
tion, but an increased rate of acquisition. This arises 
from the greater facility obtained by exercise of the 
powers. An object gaining bulk in successive revolu- 
tions must, at each turn, acquire a greater surface 
for accumulation in the next. There is growth for 
the soul indeed beyond the accumulation of gold in 
earthly coffers — beyond " making money pay well," 
in the language of covetousness. 

As you contrast gold with the soul, are you at any 
less to decide for which the hand of safe-keeping 
should be nerved ? 

Some persons can think of pleasure or pain for 
twenty or thirty years with much emotion, who gaze 
in apathy at the same for eternity. Many cheerfully 
.propose to struggle so much of their lifetime for 
wealth, that they can expect afterwards to enjoy but 
few years with their villa and imagined felicity in 
retirement. Yet their hearts throb feebly, as you hold 
before them the idea of bliss or pain for much more 
than a million of years of old age in eternity. Why 
is this ? Is it not because the vision is enfeebled by 
confinement to little objects ? The narrow dark mouth 



64 A COMPARISON. 



II 



of an earthly mine, or of a grave, close to the eye, is 
defined, and the sight of the eye affects the heart, 
while a vast mountain side, at a little distance, is 
vague. The vision is not stretched to the attitude and 
sweep of the object. But the earthly-minded vision 
will be enlarged by death to take in the idea of the 
first million of years — the first appalling mountain of 
woe — to be succeeded by an endless chain of the same 
towering peaks. Could a mountain of gold be pos- 
sessed on earth, it would only exist then in the memory, 
and would indeed be far from a diverting idea to allay 
horror at sight of the masses of woe. 

Good angels and devils are awake to the worth of 
the soul. With the former, " there is joy over one 
sinner that repenteth." (Luke xv. 10.) Of the latter — 
thousands — a "legion'' find one soul mark enough for 
their envy and malice. (Mark v. 9.) You — the very 
soul exposed — may think yourself too small an object 
for such extensive fiendish effort. But, if a legion — 
a division of five thousand fallen angels — were to be 
busy seventy years (though indeed your life may be 
much less) in luring your one soul to hell, the aggre- 
gate of effort, measured by the agents and duration, 
would, compared with the endless result, be less than 
a drop to the bucket. Would not the bulk of all the 
waters upon earth be finally far exceeded by the merest 
stream an inch wide,, if that stream should have un- 



DIVINE LAMENTATIONS. 65 

limited extension? And would not any efforts of 
fallen angels for the ruin of one soul be trivial com- 
pared with so vast a result as the endless ruin ? 

Think then of the soul for whose deception in love 
of gold fallen angels stretch their powers ; over whose 
escape good angels rejoice ; over whom God himself 
bends in anxiety, saying, " How shall I give thee up ?" 

The sympathies of God are not the less surely opera- 
tive because he saw it best, all things considered, not 
to force souls from choosing hell. In boundless bene- 
volence he desires that they would choose right for 
themselves, in a wisely ordered state of inevitable 
trial. "As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no 
pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the 
wicked turn from his way and live : turn ye, turn ye 
from your evil ways, for why will ye die?'' (Ezekiel 
xxxiii. 11.) The incorrigible refuse, and are finally 
ruined, under Divine lamentations : " But my people 
would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would 
none of me. So I gave them up unto their own hearts' 
lust : and they walked in their own counsels. Oh ! 
that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel 
had walked in my" ways !" (Ps. Ixxxi. 11, 13.) " How 
often would I have gathered thy children together, as 
a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye 
would not." (Luke xiii. 34.) "And when he was come 
near, he beheld the city and wept over it, saying, If 

thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, 
6* 



66 A DIVINE SURVEY. 

the things which belong unto thy peace ! but now they 
are hid from thine eyes." (Luke xix. 41, 42.) 

Precious soul ! God, above all others, is anxious for 
you. He only comprehends eternal joy. No good 
angel has full conception of what awaits himself. The 
Divine contemplations alone go on, and on, to the far, 
far distant points of a glorified creature's growth, 
. and transcendent exultations in bliss. Grod only sees 
what a heaven is in store for you. Ah ! He is reluc- 
tant you should fail of it. 

And the Divine survey alone can take in the future 
woes of the lake of fire. No fallen angel has full 
conception of what awaits him. The glance of God 
alone can go on, and on, to the far, far distant points of 
a state of perdition. He sees what a hell awaits you 
if you heed not his drawings. be warned by the 
secret voice of his loving Spirit ! Do you not now 
hear it? Listen again. If you turn away to the 
idolatry of covetousness, the immaculate robes of both 
infinite justice and mercy, in eternity, will be unstained 
with the blood of your ruined soul. God sees its 
worth far above the worth of gold, however you may 
look away from the difi*erence ; and, depend upon it, 
he is resolved to be clear. And to this end may he 
not, in his providence, have sent to you these pages, 
and arrayed facts before your mind in the light of 
his Word and Spirit, not the less surely opening your 



RECAPITULATION. 67 

eyes to your duty and danger because lie stoops to 
use clay in the process. 

Has there not been presented to your view a duty, 
the performance of which may at once secure you 
from the sway of the great idol, Mammon, and help 
to remove the chief hindrance to the greatest work in 
the world — a duty clearly enjoined by Scripture — 
illustrated by impressive examples — suggested by 
your consecration at conversion and subsequent reli- 
gious experience — by the pitiful condition of hun- 
dreds of millions of benighted and infatuated souls — 
by the worthiness of church enterprises — by money's 
worthlessness in itself, and its deceptiveness — by 
gratitude for God's unspeakable gifts, and by pru- 
dence for the interests of your precious immortal 
r spirit ? 

Surely, as you ponder these motives, your heart is 
taking a right direction. 

May the God of all grace aid you, and may you 
enter upon the consideration of the next Essay strongly 
resolved to know and to do your whole duty ! 



AN ESSAY 



'OS 



SYSTEMATIC BENEFICENCE, 



CHAP TEH I. 

SYSTEM IN ENLARGED BENEFICENCE OBLIGATORY. 

Attention is now entreated to system in the pro- 
portions and times of liberality. 

We proceed in the hope that, in view of motives 
presented in the preceding Essay, the reader is not 
indijQferent to the duty of giving at once^ according to 
ability, after a candid and judicious allowance for 
sanctified business ; — at once, according to his obliga- 
tion, in view of having submitted in the past to no 
system sufficient to secure to God his just claims. 
Should not all in hand due to Him be paid imme- 
diately, with more scrupulousness than a note due a 
fellow-mortal ? And, as to the capital conscientiously 
retained for prosecuting business, should there not be 

(68) 



INFERENCE. 69 

a speedy and valid arrangement by will, to secure 
such final appropriations of it as seem to tlie impar- 
tial conscience suitable, in view of tlie claims of God, 
as well as of the family ? 

After the appropriation in liquidation of arrearages, 
and the making of the will, the duty is to give peri- 
odically from profits or income, according to ability. 

1. If the Bible did not specifically enjoin system 
in beneficence, would not the duty be obvious on the 
ground that it is wrong to delay any acts of faith- 
fulness to God ? Is there not such a delay, if His 
money is retained for periods longer than are neces- 
sary ? Therefore all practicable frequency in giving 
is a clear duty. Why not as often, in all possible 
cases, as the return of the day which belongs to God ? 
"Why not then let the money which belongs to Him 
also be rendered? Retaining money from God for 
unnecessarily long periods, in uses for one's self, 
must be a higher crime than retaining instalments 
due to a man. And surely no more before God than 
before man can we be excused by alleging an inten- 
tion to bring up arrears after the money, for an im- 
proper time, shall have been used for ourselves. 

The Lord, in His church, has use for all that is 
His, as fast as it becomes due. There are ways for 
its use of more consequence than an earthly creditor's 
plans for gaining compound interest. 



70 INJUNCTION. 

The propriety of systematic appropriation of 
earthly goods to God may be further inferred from 
its having been required in the Mosaic dispensation, 
with such regularity and frequency, and in such set 
proportions in worth, in the forms of sacrifices, obla- 
tions, and tithes. And we learn from Josephus that 
the Jewish church had regular weekly collections on 
the Sabbath at their synagogues, of not only tithes, 
but spontaneous gifts, to be sent to the Temple. 

We need not be surprised to find weekly benefi- 
cence introduced into the Christian church. Inspira- 
tion has enjoined it therein ; and therefore, 

2. Our duty in systematic beneficence is more than 
a matter of inference. 

"Now concerning the collection for the Saints, tts 
I have given order to the Churches of Galatia, even 
so do ye. Upon the first day of the week let every 
one of you lay by him in store as God hath prospered 
liim, that there be no gatherings when I come." (1 
Cor. xvi. 1, 2.) For "in store," Macknight reads 
"in the treasury;" that is, the general fund of the 
church. This depositing was to be (as formerly that 
of the Jews) a weekly custom, without any waiting to 
lay up money for some time ; and then, under the 
labored appeals of a visiting preacher, being put into 
a painful suspense and struggle to decide liow much 
to give, and probably to conclude a due donation too 



A QUERY. Tl 

large because required all at once, in consequence of 
unjust delay, when, if it had been given in suitable 
instalments, it would have seemed proper, and the 
burden have been easily borne. 

CaQ one with Christian candor evade the force of 
obligation from the passage just quoted ? "Was the 
epistle containing it limited more than others ? It 
was addressed not to the Corinthians only, but also to 
" all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus 
Christ.'' (1 Cor. i. 2.) Was the passage merely 
advisory? "As I have given directions^ so do ye." 
Was each church member included ? " Let every one 
of you." Was there a rule laid down for propor- 
tion of means applicable to any man in any age ? 
"As Grod hath prospered,'' This passage fixes an 
obligation as extensive as the grounds upon which it 
rests, namely, worthy uses for "collections," the 
existence of "churches," a return of "the first day 
of the week," or of any periodic time for donations, 
if necessarily less frequent ; and " as God hath pros- 
pered." 

Why are the churches now so indifierent about this 
rule, while there is a general acknowledgment of 
others as binding, which were not as much guarded 
for general application ? Can we not discover in what 
direction the vision is defective ? on what point eye- 
salve is needed ? that the disease of Christendom is a 



72 EXAMPLES. 

blindness with reference to the duty of pecuniary con- 
secrations to God ? 

Therefore, dear reader, if your eyes are not closed, 
you cannot but see the duty of systematic benefi- 
cence with reference to the financial necessities of the 
church. And you cannot suppose that these uses for 
your money, afiecting as they do the spiritual destiny 
of men, are of less moment than was the supply of 
the physical wants of the saints at Jerusalem, as con- 
templated in the Apostle's direction. 



CHAPTER IL 

SYSTEM ILLUSTRATED BY EXAMPLES. 

1. The pious informer dispensations^ and the Qhris- 
tians of the Apostolic age. 

We need not repeat the scriptural references to 
them as given in the preceding chapter. But that we 
may feel more strongly our obligations, let us imagine 
how these patterns of beneficence would have adapted 
themselves to times like ours. 

Would not those of the Patriarchal and Mosaic 
dispensations have felt like pursuing a still more strict 
system in beneficence than they did under a faint dawn, 



EXAMPLE OF ZACCHEUS. 73 

had they found themselves under a risen sun, that was 
shining for all nations ; and had they, in addition to 
a sense of gratitude for themselves, possessed the 
evidence of being the appointed and responsible instru- 
ments to lead perishing souls from darkness to see 
the ^^ great light" — of being such instruments under 
the declaration, "the Gentiles shall come to thy light, 
and kings to the brightness of thy rising?'' — if, with 
all this, they had been met with the fact that the want 
of money was the great lack in the notable work, 
and that God was bounteously and systematically sup- 
plying them with money for this very purpose, would 
they not then have been stirred to still greater zeal in 
systematic contributions ? 

Behold the example even of Zaccheus : (Luke xix. 
8.) He, with light from a darker dispensation only, 
and excluded as a publican from the full advantages 
of that, could give half his goods to the poor : — such 
a man! — so much! — with reference only to temporal 
destitution! How should this incite us to plans of 
ample giving, enjoying, as we do, gospel light, and 
viewing, as we do, the spiritually poor on the brink of 
hell? 

The examples of early Christians shine from St. 

Paul's declarations, as already adduced. But it may 

be remarked here that these examples should be the 

more impressive to us from their having been closely 

7 



74 A COVENANT. 

connected with the full guidance of the Holy Ghost 
in the church, as well as from their great regularity 
in view of even the merely temporal wants of men. 
Mark, then, the responsibility resting upon the church 
of a later generation, when the absence of miracu- 
lous gifts leaves a greater dependence upon other means 
which cannot be effectively used without money. Can 
such a church be excused for resting, in fitful and 
inadequate contributions, under a conviction of the sad 
destitution, not of the bodies merely, but of the pre- 
cious and undying souls of men ? 

2. Examples in systematic beneficence since the 
Reformation. 

(1.) Lord Chief Justice Hale, Hammond, Doddridge, 
Baxter, and others, regularly gave a tenth of their 
income; Dr. Watts ^ fifth; Mrs. Rowe one-half ; Mr. 
Wesley, as we have seen, all above actual necessities. 
The Countess of Huntingdon, though quite wealthy, 
regularly gave all she could save by a retired and 
economical life. 

(2.) Mr. Nathan R. Cobb, a pious Baptist merchant 
of Boston, in 1821, at the age of twenty-three, entered 
into the following covenant, to which he adhered till 
death. When leaving this world, he praised God that, 
by following it, he had bestowed over ^40,000 : — 

'' By the grace of God, I will never be worth mora 
than ^50,000. By the grace of God, I will give one- 



A GUIDE IN BUSINESS. 75 

fourth of the net profits of my business to charitable 
and religious uses. If I am ever worth $20,000, I 
will give one-half of my net profits ; and if ever worth 
$30,000, 1 will give three-fourths ; and the whole after 
$50,000. So help me God, or give to a more faithful 
steward, and set me aside. N. R. Cobb.'' 

(3.) '' The benevolence of Louisa Osborn, the 
colored domestic, who, from the wages of one dollar 
a week, paid twenty dollars a year to educate a youth 
in Ceylon, as it has been brought to light by the 
missionary who witnessed the unusual benefits of her 
donation to the mission, has thrilled the hearts of 
American Christians."^ 

(4.) " Normand Smith, a saddler of Hartford, Con- 
necticut, after practising for years an elevated system 
of benevolence, bequeathed in charity $30,000."^ 

(5.) " An anonymous writer says of himself, that 
he commenced business and prosecuted it in the usual 
way, till he lost $900, which was all he was worth, 
and found himself in debt $1100. Being led by his 
trials, through God's grace, to trust, as he hoped, in 
Christ, he, at the age of forty, determined to take 
God's Word for his guide in his business, and conse- 
crated his earnings to the Lord. The first year he 
gave $12, for eighteen years the amount has in- 

^ " Zaccheas, &c./' by Rev. S. Harris, p. 10. 
« Ibid. p. 44. 



76 SOMETHING SIGNIFICANT. 

creased by about 25 per cent., and the last year he 
gave §850 ; and he says he did it easier than during 
the first year he paid the §12. Besides, though 
with nothing but his hands to depend on when he 
began this course, he paid the whole debt of §1100, 
with interest, though it took him nine years to do 
it."^ 

(6.) Is there not a pointing to weekly financial 
system in the start of the great modern reyival which 
raised up the Methodist Chuixh ? Such system to 
some extent was inwrought in the very means so 
clearly at the foundation of the spiritual temple as 
class-meetino^s. ''Manvmet too:ether to consult on 
a proper method for discharging the public debt, and 
it was at length agreed, 1. That every member of the 
society who was able should contribute a penny a 
week. 2. That the whole society should be divided 
into little companies or classes, about twelve in each 
class ; and, 3. That one person in each class should 
receive the contribution of the rest, and bring it to 
the stewards weekly.''" 

(7.) Among the AVesleyans in England, there have 
been many striking examples. In the statistics of 
beneficence, for Wesleyan Methodist Missions, as re- 
published in each Annual Report, it may be seen 
that, while there have been many donations and 

^ Ibid. pp. 44, 45. 

* Wesley's Journal, Feb. loth, 1742. 



A CHANGE. 77 

legacies of hundreds and even thousands of pounds 
sterling, there have been numerous benefactors, -who, 
however unable to bestow 60 largely at once, have 
contributed, periodically, to an aggregation of like 
amounts. And there is noted one donation upon 
annuity of ten thousand pounds — a noble example for 
any member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who 
might thus use fifty thousand dollars to secure a sys- 
tematic income for perishing souls. 

(8.) Mr. Samuel Budgett should be noticed. " The 
sum of his benevolence can never be known : he did 
not, until late in life, fix on a proportion of income 
as the minimum of his gifts ; when he did, the pro- 
portion was one-sixth. Of course he did not resolve 
to give away only that, but to give away that at 
least. Had he been doubtful as to the extent of his 
givings, he would unquestionably have fixed a propor- 
tion earlier ; but he knew well that all he had was 
tithed, and more.''^ 

(9.) Mark an impressive example in the M. E. 
Church— E. S. F., (or " Zaccheus,") of Baltimore. He 
says : " When I began business, it was with the inten- 
tion and hope of becoming rich. A year afterward, I 
became a Christian, and about the same time met with 
' Cobb's Resolutions,' which I adopted. Some four 
or five years after, I read ' Normand Smith's Memoir,' 

^ '^ The Successful Merchant/' pp. 373, 374. 



78 THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS. 

and also Wesley's Sermon on the Use of Money, Avhich 
led me to devote all my gains to benevolent uses, 
reserving for myself five thousand dollars while I re- 
mained unmarried, part of which I have bequeathed 
to relations and the remainder to benevolent purposes. 
Up to this time (1853), about eighteen years, by the 
grace of God I have given away about thirty-four 
thousand dollars to benevolent objects, lent about five 
hundred dollars to those in need, which has not been 
returned, making in all about thirty-five thousand 
dollars/' 

(10.) Ponder one more case. Mrs. Eliza Garrett, 
a member of the M. E. Church, lately deceased in 
Chicago, had for several years drawn from a large 
estate but four hundred dollars a year for her own 
support, and managed to give away nearly half of that 
for pious purposes. But she kept in view further be- 
neficence. In restricting her own annual income, she 
was steadily aiming to disencumber her estate of 
certain liabilities, and make available, as she finally 
did, a legacy to the church of property worth three 
hundred thousand dollars. 



CHAPTER III. 

SYSTEM IN ITS RESULTS TO THE CHURCH. 

1. G-reat results would accrue from due and regu- 
lar distribution by wealthy members^ but not the less 
surely from such distribution by those in moderate or 
even humble circumstances. 

The latter class of members are far more numerous 
than the former, and the smaller amounts from the 
great number may furnish an aggregate equal to that 
of the great amounts from the smaller number. 

Doubtless many persons of limited means have been 
years in the church without giving a cent for some de- 
serving objects, because not able to contribute when 
called upon, according to their preconceived notions 
of liberality. How many, at annual missionary efforts, 
being unable to bestow even one or two dollars, might, 
during the year previous, more easily than some poor 
men pay for useless or hurtful indulgences, have 
laid aside ten cents for the heathen, on each first day 
of the week, and thus had a half-eagle to bestow ! 
And observe, were system to draw from the 783,358 
members of the M. E. Church the average of ten 
cents, weekly, for missions, there would be raised from 
this branch of the general church alone upwards of 
four millions of dollars annually. What a collection 

(79) 



80 CALCULATIONS. 

of "sinews of war'' towards sustaining Immanuel's 
army in aggressions upon heathendom ! 

Were there a weekly laying aside for missions, of 
even three cents for each member of the M. E. Church, 
the annual income would be, not only $260,000 as 
now hoped for, but $1,222,038.48. With this income, 
how she could raise her head ! '' look forth as the 
morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, terrible 
as an army with banners," and rapidly take new 
grounds for her King. 

In departments other than the missionary, of course 
the same principle exists for wonderful effects. A 
steady supply of many drops may make a large . 
stream. Irregular dashes may result in but little. 

But let not children grow up without the formation 
of right pecuniary habits. An annual income from 
the Sunday Schools of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
if each of the 553,065 scholars was represented by 
only one cent weekly, for missions^ would be more 
than the present annual receipts from the whole 
church for that object.^ Yet this income would not 
be the grand result to be sought, but rather the raising 
up of church members with right financial habits. 
And, in order to this, very many children should be 

^ Some liberal donors may be surprised at this statement, but 
it is accounted for by the fact that only a few give much, and 
many give nothing. 



MUCH AND LITTLE. 81 

disciplined to contribute more than one cent weekly, 
and all should have their hearts taught to feel the 
claims of more than one cause. 

Were adults and children generally to attain the 
standard of duty, might we not expect that system- 
atic beneficence, by example, would be extended 
throughout fast increasing ranks of converts in hea- 
then nations ? There are proofs of a right suscepti- 
bility, in this direction, in those nations. The case 
of Sir Jamesetjee Jeejeebhoy, an India Parsee, is well 
known. He gave for the construction of hospitals, 
education, &c., within ten years, more than .£100,000. 
In connection with his wife, he tendered to the gov- 
ernment <£36,000 in addition to the above-named sum, 
to be expended for charitable purposes. He has also 
offered to construct an aqueduct which is to cost 
£18,000. 

A Chinese convert, in connection with the English 
Church Mission at Ningpo, whose wages are only $5 
a month, from which he supports his family, has con- 
tributed nearly $14, or about one-fourth of his annual 
income, for the support of the gospel.^ 

Should the Methodist Episcopal Church and her 
sister denominations advance, as they could, by the 
aid of proper financial system, there might soon be a 
fulfilment of Isaiah iv. 13 : " 0, daughter of Zion, 

^ "Journal of Missions" of A. B. C. F. M; 



82 A STKIKIXG FACT. 

thou shalt beat in pieces many people ; and I -will 
consecrate their gain unto the Lord, and their sub- 
stance unto the Lord of the whole earth." Thus 
influences might rapidly accumulate, so that the whole 
world would speedily hear the gospel. A result not 
less probable, and indeed much more glorious, than 
the earthly ones for which Christians may withhold 
their money. 

2. Criving upon system^ proportionately to income^ 
in the cTiurcJi^ promises miicJi in view of the increas- 
ing ivealth of her members. 

The membership of the Church of Christ (may we 
not say of the Methodist branch especially ?) has been 
much made up from a class who were not likely to be 
living in a state of lethargy, under the weight of inhe- 
rited wealth. "While some in aflEluence have been 
reached, generally those of a medium and of a poor 
condition have been gathered in. From these latter 
grades how many efficient men of the age rise in 
rapidly increasing wealth, and more or less displace 
those who are relying merely on inherited, and often 
mismanaged and decreasing estates ! As might be 
expected, there is a fast-growing wealth in the church. 
Men, graciously reached (and fully qualified for even 
temporal success) by the church, a few years ago, 
who then without wealthy parents were becoming 
skilful and hardy in labor and business, as appren- 



SOMETHING PECULIAR. 83 

tices or journeymen, as clerks or silent partners, with 
a limited per centage on profits, or as laborers upon 
the lands of others, or with only some cheap acres, — 
such men have acquired estates, the income from 
which is more than sufiicient for a supply of their 
needs, and have got fully in the way of a dangerous 
accumulation for themselves and families, or for a 
gloriously efiective distribution for church enterprises. 
Here is a striking peculiarity, which, in two directions 
for the safety of souls, should incite to beneficence 
systematically proportioned to income. 

3. There is in the peculiar elements and character- 
istics of the American nation much ground of hope in 
the financial efficiency of an American church. 

Here the nations of the earth are meeting in the 
persons of hardy, energetic, and restless representa- 
tives. May there not thus be created a special facility 
for exerting an evangelizing influence upon the coun- 
tries from which they come ? 

Is it not quite probable that the Lord has raised up 
a nation in the last days peculiarly adapted to facili- 
tate the publishing of the gospel to all mankind ? In 
just such a nation you find yourself. Here is, indeed, 
ground for a sense of responsibility. And respon- 
sibility is far from being lessened for a reader who, 
without disrespect to other denominations, believes 
that a church not second in qualifications to take ad- 



84 INCREASED FACILITIES. 

vantage of the favorable national elements, is the 
very one which has nursed and sheltered him, and is 
now relying upon him for pecuniary instrumentality. 

4. The increased facilities for spreading the gospel, 
in the discoveries and inventions of the times, give 
promise of great results from contributions. 

The decisive bearings of which these modern advan- 
tages are susceptible cannot be known without an 
adequate financial supply for their improvement. A 
right direction of the streams can alone make efiica- 
cious for good the Californian or other fountains of 
gold. In addition to the contact of multitudes from 
different nations, as the metal draws them together, 
the right use of the treasure would supply other 
needed preparatives and facilities for reaching desti- 
tute souls. 

An ample supply of money to the church can alone 
lay under contribution, for a full development of 
gospel-spreading power, the steam on sea and land, 
and the processes for strangely multiplying thoughts 
upon paper, or more strangely sending them on the 
wings of lightning, in advance of the noiseless steps 
of time. 

If, for the cause of Christ, advantage be not oppor- 
tunely taken of these wonderful discoveries and inven- 
tions, may they not help to turn the world from Him ? 
And may they not incline churches t^o a Laodicean 






BRIEF STATEMENT. 85 

State, and even cause the removal of the candlestick 
from those now the most luminous and highly favored, 
and which will therefore be least excusable for delin- 
quency ? How important, then, is systematic benefi- 
cence in the Methodist Episcopal Church, as well as 
in others, at this crisis of the afiairs of our world? 

5. A man in his own schemes acknowledges the 
advantages of system. Should he grudge the benefits 
of it to the church of God ?^ 

6. National prosperity is dependent upon systematic 
financial supplies. Should the kingdom of grace be 
defrauded of so great an element of success ? 

7. Fully matured system in contributions would 
tend to secure enterprises of the church from financial 
fluctuations^ so perplexing to her counsellors in their 
plans for the future. 

8. By periodically and frequently contributing 
money to the religious causes of the day^ our attention 
would be regularly and frequently turned to them^ and 
a much more settled interest be felt in them. Our 
prayers would be added, and our faith strengthened 
for the success of the Gospel. Let none forget this. 
Nay, let it not be overlooked that entering upon 

^ A few thoughts at the conclusion of this chapter, and at the 
commencement of the next, may deserve distinct consideration, 
though they are so self-evident as to need but a brief announce- 
ment. 

8 



86 HELPS AND GUARDS. 

systematic beneficence is a sacrifice essentially pre- 
parative for right prayers and faith in many hearts. 
Certainly this sacrifice is necessary in hearts whicn 
are ready to extol prayers and faith, from a covetous 
desire to serve the church in other matters than 
dollars and cents. 



CHAPTER IV. 

SYSTEM, IN ITS RESULTS TO THE CHRISTIAN HIMSELF. 

1. In all practicable cases of laying by money for 
God "upon the first day of the week/' the donor is 
the better sustained as a cheerful giver by what that 
day brings in cessation of worldly calls, and in holy 
associations and influences. 

2. System at fixed times and in fixed proportions 
may secure the Christian's patience from surprises 
which might threaten it under sudden and unexpected 
calls for money. 

3. System may be for some persons a needful guard 
against acting to be seen of men. It will ' prevent 
waiting to give only on occasions of public appeals 
and responses, and the display of subscription papers. 
Not that men must refuse to act on such occasions, 



"GIVE, GIVE.'* 87 

but beneficence confined to them may leave some 
hearts unhealthy in their secret motives. 

4. System will bring you to act from principle. 
You will not be left to be moved by an uncertain flow 
of feeling. The periodic time arrives, and, feel as 
you may, you act. 

5. System in what you are so conversant with as 
money, tends to discipline the mind and exalt you 
intellectually. 

6. In order to peace of conscience^ are not regularity 
and frequency in sacrifices of money a needful return 
for regularity and frequency in Crod's hestowments ? 
In view of his "daily loading" you with temporal 
" benefits," can you feel acquitted without a disposi- 
tion for weekly^ or frequent ofierings of temporal 
things ? " His mercies are new every morning^'' yea, 
oftener, as your body receives food upon system in 
portions and at regular times. Indeed, God has a 
system^ going to your rescue every time you breathe. 
Do the church enterprises say to you " Give, give," 
oftener than you thus say to him, "in whose hand 
your hreath iSy' and to whom, therefore, as your 
lungs iuhale the life-giving element, you are virtually 
saying, "Give, give?" How often have you thus 
said this, while perhaps making to God but few of the 
returns for which your powers and opportunities have 
qualified you ! Yet he has graciously forborne to 



'88 A STROXa CURRENT. 

exclaim, " I am wearied with the cry of ' Give, give.' " 
Surely, then, you would not, you dare not, fretfully 
exclaim to him, '' I am wearied with the cry ' Give, 
give,' '' as the words come to you in his Scriptures, in 
his providence, and in his church ! 

But think of invaluable spiritual blessings. Think 
of " daily bread,'' and of the breath of life in the 
higher sense. '^ He holdeth your soul in life." " Day 
unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night show- 
eth knowledge;" while, if you will, you may have his 
word hid in your heart, and the constant care of his 
Spirit, with the ceaseless flow of his unspeakable love. 
And if the Divine hand withhold some temporal 
advantages, in that very act it opens a way for the 
more refined riches to be derived from adversity: 
^' More precious than gold that perisheth, tried in the 
fire," (1 Pet. i. 7 ;) the gracious procedure of God 
being far higher than would be yours in withholding 
from his treasury copper to drop in gold. 

7. The power of habit which persevering system in 
beneficence will bring to your aid is needed to counter- 
act soul-ruining influences. We all know the force 
of habit ; how, from frequently repeated acts of the 
physical, intellectual, or moral powers, even in matters 
most opposite and repulsive to the original tastes or 
tendencies, many men find themselves borne away by 
an almost irresistible current. So it is from the gross 



PRESSURE IN A CROWD. 89 

relish for a nauseous weed, or a fatal drink, to the 
refined tastes of the head and heart for the high sub- 
limities of science. 

Now keep in mind that the world, in this nineteenth 
century, though freed from some of the hobbies of 
former ages, finds enlarging opportunities for the 
exercise of its selfishness in the wide pursuit of money. 
This being the great channel for exertion and excite- 
ment, aside from the true God and eternal life, it is 
the one in which Christians are most likely to be 
carried away. And without some counter-influ- 
ences, there is, to increase the danger, a mighty 
force of intellectual habit operating in the necessary 
^attention to business, as a Christian finds himself 
pressed in a money-seeking crowd. To avoid being 
temporally crushed in the crowd, he passes along. 
He adopts systematic efforts for gain. He has retro- 
spections and reckonings of profit periodically. They 
are frequently, if not weekly, or even daily, made. 
He has operating upon him, in brief, a pecuniary 
system tending to make him worldly ; to keep him 
looking short of heaven. And if he does not adopt 
a system of regular and oft-repeated acts of money- 
giving, as well as of money-getting ; if he does not, 
in pecuniary afiairs, turn his eye to spiritual results 

as well as to temporal, to heaven as well as to earth, 
8* 



90 A VIBRATION. 

is there no danger of his being eventually "drowned 
in perdition?" 

" The care of this world, and the deceitfulness of 
riches, choke the word." (Matt. xiii. 22.) If there 
is no counter-habit, that " care'' easily ensues from 
the force of the habit of acquiring, and then insid- 
iously banishes grace. The fatal care is represented 
in Scripture as the being of a "doubtful mind," or, 
rather, as in the marginal reading, "m careful 
suspense.'' (Luke xii. 29.) It is that state of mind, 
through the day and through the week, and in the 
business reflections of every evening, and especially 
of Saturday evening, which gives to the heart a rest- 
less vibration between hope and fear, between elation 
and depression, in regard to merely temporal results. 
Is not this care inconsistent with essential elements 
of grace in the heart ? Is it not inconsistent with 
faith in God, even as to his providence, and as to his 
ability to make comparatively small "things work 
together" for our "good?" And can we be in per- 
turbation in regard to temporal supplies, and maintain 
saving faith for eternal blessings ? It is essential to 
a safe state that we live with heaven in view — with 
an eye on the prize at the end of the race. Can we 
be so living while susceptible of intense elation or 
depression in regard to pecuniary affairs? As well 
might we believe that a man has his heart resting on 



A SIN AGAINST LIGHT. 91 

the end of his journey, who originally started in 
eagerness for a proffered million of dollars, while we 
observe him sitting by the way, muttering, " Always 
having bad luck — a quarter of a dollar gone;" and 
then see him cheerfully start up, turn backward, with 
his soul in his eyes, and whispering to himself, ^'But 
I trust to find it after all." When the young convert 
starts for heaven, with more in view than a million of 
dollars, and assured that any temporal losses on the 
way cannot overtax his resources for the journey, 
("will not be above that" he is "able to bear," 1 
Cor. X. 10, 13,) does he then pause either to repine 
or rejoice in so small a thing as money ? " Praise 
the Lord!" he exclaims, "I have something better 
in prospect !" What then if you find the old professor 
a subject of the care we have referred to ? Has 
there been no deadly change? The sin has been 
against the revealed fact that every loss may add to 
the final inheritance : " Our light aflSiction, which is 
but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceed- 
ing and eternal weight of glory." (2 Cor. iv. 17.) 
Should a man on his way to receive a million of 
dollars fret about the loss of a few coppers, especially 
if he were assured the loss would add "/ar more' to the 
amount awaiting him ? In the face of an immeasur- 
ably higher fact, against a vastly higher interest, is 
the fatal care exercised — even against the promise 



92 THE POOR man's DANGER. 

that adversity shall work " a far more exceeding and 
eternal weight of glory. '^ What sin ! What a deadly 
effect must follow ! 

But the choking influence of this care is not 
exerted only in a direct interference, as already 
noticed, but in diverting moisture from the heart, as 
would " thorns" from the roots of plants. The victim 
becomes, at the close of the day or week, exhausted 
in spirit. He is chafed and jaded by disappointment, 
or worn down by the excitement of success. He has 
scarcely any juices of the heart remaining for spiritual 
sustenance, enjoyment, or activity. 

And let the poor man remember that this soul- 
ruining care is not operative in the striving for great 
fortunes only. If he fastens his heart upon the sum 
of a few dollars, and presses on without calmness in 
faith, and without the centering of the affections on 
heaven, he is a victim for the time being, to say 
nothing about his becoming habituated to the excite- 
ment caused by having money continually in view, 
and of the liability to (what is generally the effect, 
when a coveted amount is attained) the fixing on a 
higher one for another exciting race. 

It should be an alarming thought for any one ven- 
turing on, without the habit of systematic beneficence 
as a guard against this care, that he may irretrievably 
sink, while saying, " Peace, peace,'' to himself. For, 



REGULARITY. 93 

observe, the choking process, as in case of a mere 
plant, commences, to a careless observer, impercepti- 
bly, and goes to the fatal end so gradually as not to 
alarm the constant beholder. The ruinous work is 
hidden under reputable appearances to the church, 
and to one's self. It is the surest mode for a soul to 
be lost without forfeiting the good opinion of a money- 
loving age. No wonder the Saviour's illustrative 
phrase, in regard to the choking, was '' the deceitful- 
ness of riches." 

System in contributing money will bring to bear 
against all the foregoing dangers the mighty force of 
habit. And will it not break up the fatal care which 
exists only in the inordinate desire of money, by 
destroying its charm ? How can money be inordi- 
nately desired while the heart, by system, is subjected 
to a practical sense of its being divinely intrusted, 
and of its increase laying him under increased obliga- 
tion to God? While the business man contributes 
his profits in proper frequency and extent to God, the 
deadly care cannot maintain vitality any more than 
could thorns with the frequent severance of their 
roots from the soil. The ice of worldliness which 
may commence to form upon the affections, could 
acquire but little thickness while the laden wheels of 
beneficence regularly and frequently rolled through 
the stream. Satan would not find for a net, cords of 



94 SOMETHING EXCITING. 

sufficient length to hold a soul, if they were clipped 
by frequently recurring appropriations of money. 
But a lack of system would leave room for a fatal 
delay. The thorns could be fixed, the current deeply 
congealed, the net completed around the victim. 

8. The general prosperity of the times suggests sys- 
tematic beneficence as needful to prevent a fatal con- 
currence of mind and heart in worldliness. 

The business man's intellect^ as we have seen, neces- 
sarily goes forth in his sphere of exertion. There 
might be little need of guarding the affections against 
following inordinately, if adversity only awaited effort. 
But, in our times, excepting now and then a brief 
season of reaction from prosperity itself, the great 
majority of capable minds are meeting with success 
after success, and finding a way by each one to secure 
a greater. There is something in such prosperity 
peculiarly exciting to the affections. Without strong 
guards to prevent their wandering from the true God, 
they may start off feverishly, in admiration of Mam- 
mon, and run fondly curious in his service, to meet 
new and sudden turns of fortune. And man is so 
constituted that whatever most agreeably excites his 
heart, he must love with great ardor. If his heart, 
instead of holding to the true God, become attached 
to money, it will pursue it intensely and impetuously, 
and may go to great lengths of infatuation. Of the 



NEEDFUL DISCIPLINE. 95 

many who start in the fatal way, few take the time 
and pains to analyze their own emotions. 

Without system to discipline the affections, at set 
tim'es, to dropping money freely into the Divine trea- 
sury, as something unworthy, except as mere means 
to Divinely favored ends, the heart, however gradually 
and unconsciously, will follow the intellect. The 
decreasing clamors of conscience will be met with a 
reference to the lawful submerging of the intellect, 
without a realization that the heart is becoming inter- 
locked therewith, and rapidly losing the life of faith 
in the whirlpool. Therefore, as the surgeon's bands 
may be requisite steadily to confine members or parts 
of the body to their place, so, in these days of general 
prosperity, it may be requisite for the cure of the 
injured, as well as for the safety of the sound, that 
there be a rigid adjustment to the moral man, of a 
plan ior giving money ^ with a freedom and a frequency 
sufficient to preveut the displacement of the affections 
from their proper object. Can there be any effective 
substitute for such a plan, while God vouchsafes the 
prosperity in pecuniary pursuits so generally enjoyed 
by the nation and by the church ; while, for instance, 
the earth so discloses her dark treasures and her yel- 
low one, that the former overfurnish hearth-stones 
for domestic comforts, and the demands of wonderful 
inventions for saving labor, and expediting business 



96 DREADFUL INFATUATION. 

on sea and land, and the latter has so overfilled the 
purses of the people as to be worn upon their persons 
in needless ornaments ; and while the earth from her 
surface yields for the masses a superabundance in food 
and raiment — enough to furnish a full test in the pro- 
bation of beings susceptible of gluttony, of pride, and 
of avarice ? Surely " Jeshurun has waxed fat." 
There can be no safe substitute for the regular and 
frequent giving of money ^ for a people thus prospered. 

" As God hath prospered^'' is the rule of inspiration, 
(1 Cor. xvi. %) 

(9.) Adopt system in view of the Scriptural records 
of dreadful infatuation and ruin which have resulted 
from devotion to money. 

Think of Balaam/ of Achan,^ of Gehazi,* of Ju- 
das,* and of Ananias.^ What was the secret of their 
course ? Let us see. — When the affections have once 
fully learned to follow the intellect in the chase for 
wealth, do they not often hastily pass beyond and 
subject the latter ? The head is dragged by the im- 
pulses of the heart, which has no eye. The reason- 
ing faculties become perverted, facts distorted, infer- 
ences deceptive, and the Scriptures lowered by loose 
interpretations. And if a correct conclusion, at times, 
suddenly overtakes and threatens mastery, it is so 

1 Num. xxii. 7. ' Josh. vii. 21. « 2 Ki. v. 20. 

* Matt. xxvi. 15. e Acts v. 3. 



A FATAL FEARLESSNESS. 9T 

unwelcome that there is a dogged resistance, or a des- 
perate and successful grapple to thrust it away, and 
then a violent rushing on to leave it out of sight. 
When the will becomes enslaved to idolatrous affec- 
tions, the man may reason as he pleases. He may 
flatter himself all is right, and exult in an exciting 
stream of emotions, while he is hurried towards the 
lake of fire. And, not in all cases, if in that of Ju- 
das, may the victim, before the soul leaves the body, 
have a full discovery of his fate. 

Now, dear reader, if you pass on without systematic 
beneficence, in these money-making times, until your 
affections follow your intellect, and then the latter 
submit to the former, you may still pass on to eternal 
ruin, slighting alarming truths, whether coming to 
you through these pages or other mediums, with what 
you may self-complacently deem manly strength of 
mind, and justifiable indifference. 

You will then little think yourself a victim to the 
spirit of Balaam's sin, while you impetuously urge 
your way to hold fast or amass money, against Divine 
revelations recorded^ and against the eternal interests 
of heathen, or others, who might dwell in the " goodly 
tents of Jacob" and " the tabernacles of Israel." 

You will little think that Aclian no more surely 
transgressed a Divine prohibition, in laying aside 
treasures of this wicked world, buried in his own tent, 
9 



98 A FATAL FEARLESSNESS. 

than have you, in laying up "treasures upon earth," 
(Matt. vi. 19,) and in virtually saying, " I will be rich," 
while resolving to possess more than is strictly need- 
ful, and to have it, as it were, buried in your own 
house, or elsewhere. (1 Tim. vi. 8, 9.) 

When fully infatuated, you will little think that 
Gieliazi no more surely transgressed against a prophet 
than have you against the God of the prophets, 
evangelists, and apostles, and that Gehazi was no 
more guilty of falsehood than yourself, in assuring 
your conscience that God allowed an unnecessary ac- 
cumulation, while his Word, his Spirit, and his provi- 
dence were in substance propounding, as did Elisha 
to Gehazi, " Is it a time to receive money ?" 

You will little think, before you come to yourself, 
and feel that it would have been good for you not to 
have been born, that though Judas betrayed the per- 
son of the Master for thirty pieces of silver, you, for 
the retention of an amount perhaps less to your views 
of wealth, have betrayed the interests of his kingdom. 

And you will little think that Ananias no more 
surely kept back a part, than yourself, under profes- 
sions of being wholly the Lord's. 

You will little realize that all these who sinned so 
fatally in the love of money went on pertinaciously 
like yourself, w^Ith self-satisfying excuses, in fearless 
excitement, till they acted out what was In their 



A WONDERFUL ELEMENT. 99 

hearts, so that their true positions before Divine jus- 
tice could be made manifest. And you will forget 
that, while you may not be overtaken, as were they 
by Divine displeasure visible on earth, as well as ex- 
tended into eternity, it will be because you are under 
a Divine economy that more generally appoints judi- 
cial inflictions to occur entirely beyond this life. 

think, dear reader, be entreated to think, if you 
thus go on, what will be your retrospection from 
eternity ! How your whole being will be wrung with 
anguish, as you wake up, too late, from infatuation, 
and become filled with a sense of what you have 
brought on yourself; what wrath and horror — indescri- 
bable — endless ! The woes of eternity will immeasura- 
bly transcend the sword upon Balaam, the stoning of 
Achan, the leprosy of Gehazi, the agonies of departing 
Judas, or the death-fall of Ananias. 

Will you not, then, secure yourself against the 
deadly perversion of affections and intellect, by what 
we have seen to be the only adequate guard, system^ 
atic beneficence ? 

10. In what element of life must you he founds if 
moving in Crod^ fully raised from the fall? 

There is no declaration that God is 'power ^ though 
He is omnipotent ; nor that He is hnowledge^ though 
He is omniscient; but '' Grod is love,'' His infinite 
centre is love, though from it He has infinite emana- 



100 ESCAPE FROM A MAELSTROM. 

tions, in various attributes. What an element must 
be this love ! And this element He vouchsafes to the 
faithful Christian. 0, glorious thought! Indescri- 
bable idea ! In this you can be in God. " He that 
dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him." 
(1 John iv. 16.) 

Now, in ejQForts to escape from the fall^ and to rise 
into God who "is love," system and habit, as in less 
matters, must be advantageous. And in what is it so 
important to introduce the help of system^ as in the 
very concerns where the most subtile forms of selfish- 
ness — of the very element directly antagonistic to love 
— rally under most plausible pretences ? Remember 
that system pervades the universe of God, wherever 
the fall has not introduced anomalies — whether in the 
inanimate, vegetable, animal, intellectual, or spiritual 
kingdoms. 

If you would rise, then, from the irregularities of 
the fall, and find your eternal orbit on high, under 
Heaven's first law, order ; if you would thus rise from 
selfishness^ the troubled and troublous element most 
antagonistic to the heaven of love, and from the very 
onaelstrom of selfishness — the strife for wealth — then 
adopt systematic heneficence for the enterprises of the 
church in which God has placed you for continued 
probation. 

Forget not the souls of the heathen and of others, 



EXCUSES WILL ARISE. 101 

and forget not your own soul. Crowds of your im- 
mortal fellows are perishing. The church has the 
gospel — the only remedy. She lacks money to send 
that remedy. For this, she has long been asking ^ 
pleading, groaning, weeping, agonizing, almost des- 
pairing ; — she stretches her trembling hand, and pre- 
sents the greatest motives to surrender money largely, 
and upon system, the greatest work in the world, and 
the removal of the greatest hindrance, the greatest 
results for herself, for millions of souls, for your own 
soul. 



CHAPTER V. 

EXCUSES IN REGARD TO BENEFICENCE. 

Those noble souls — many, we hope — who make not 
excuses, will bear with the effort to reach those who do. 

The design is to notice excuses arising both from 
reluctance to give systematically, during life, and 
from reluctance to give largely, at once, according to 
over accumulated means, and then largely upon sys- 
tem. Both liberality and system have been urged. 
With reference to both may excuses arise. 

It is a philosophical fact that, subsequent to the 
presentation of reasons and motives, however conclu- 
9* 



102 HOW DOES GOD WORK? 

sive on any subject, if the will of the person addressed 
remain obstinately set on one side of the question, 
nothing will arise to view but things really, or appa- 
rently, on that side ; and the resolutely biased per- 
son may settle down contentedly under one-sided 
pleas. If any one who reads these pages thus errs, 
we would not have him sink out of reach, without 
light following, to show whither he is tending. The 
design, therefore, is to examine excuses arising from 
a spirit of delinquency, as well as some which may be 
entertained in candor. 

1. " God in his sovereignty can bring to pass desi- 
rable results without waiting for human instrument- 
alities." 

Does he always bring them to pass thus in nature ? 
Let mankind stand aloof from persons helpless in 
infancy, or from disease, and see if, in regard to men's 
hodieSy desirable results would be attained as frequently 
as now. How is it in grace — with reference to their 
souls ? The Bible — if no human preacher or teacher 
were Divinely employed — so far from springing in its 
leaves spontaneously from the earth, is only sent forth 
for the healing of the nations, as men and women with 
dollars, and even children with pennies, prepare the 
way for the labor of the eyes, hands, and feet of still 
other human beings. And how was it in regard to 
your own conversion ? Had all mankind in this and 



USE OF MONEY. 103 

past generations been inactive, under perverted views 
of Divine sovereignty, would your own soul have been 
brought out of darkness ? What, if we cannot arrive 
at all the reasons why God, in his very sovereignty ^ 
has determined that salvation shall have an instru- 
mental, as well as a meritorious and efficacious cause ? 
The fact is nevertheless before us. Mystery cannot 
annihilate it, any more than it can the law of gravi- 
tation. And, if God is unchangeable, as it has been, 
and now is, so shall it be. 

2. " Cannot He reach the heathen and others, with- 
out pecuniary sacrifices on the part of Christians?" 

Did he through past ages and trains of providence 
thus reach us, and prevent our passing through life 
heathens ? Had not Christians in the past, in order 
to accelerate the gospel, consented to sacrifice money 
and opportunities for securing money, would not our 
condition have been the dreadfully miserable one in 
which a lack of such sacrifices now leaves the groping 
nations ? 

How does God, in fact, reach the heathen and others 
at the present day ? By some new agencies accom- 
modated to covetous church members? No, verily. 
Facts to the contrary are before us. 

And when an excuse cannot arise with the absence 
of rebuking facts, but only from the insidious working 
in head or heart, of something else, let us beware of 
the excuse. 



104 DARKNESS AND LIGHT. 

3. '' But should not the gospel be free ?" 

YeSj to the heathen, or others, too ignorant to 
appreciate it, or too poor to support the ministry, as 
were some for whom St. Paul labored in a double 
sense. Therefore you who have light and means 
should contribute to sustain gospel laborers among 
the benighted and destitute. 

4. ^^Have I proof that the gospel can favorably 
affect the spiritual destiny of those now without it ?" 

Yes, if the Holy Ghost sent forth St. Paul and 
others for such, the Gentiles ; and if the Saviour left 
a command to preach the gospel to every creature. 
That Spirit, that Saviour, cannot err. They know 
the state of the heathen and of others, and the philo- 
sophy of salvation and damnation better than we. 
Who will venture to say, in opposition to the Divine 
procedure, that the gospel can make no favorable 
difference in the spiritual destiny of souls ? 

But, even if you could be so short-sighted or pre- 
sumptuous as to suppose that the gospel affects 
favorably the present life only, then, if you did to 
others as you would be done unto, you would not 
hesitate. Compare your present condition with what 
you must suppose it would have been without gospel 
light — allowing for the purpose of argument only, as 
it cannot be true in fact, that you would as probably , 
have been fitted for a holy heaven — and then decide 



THE PROGRESS OP CHRISTIANITY. 105 

if some of your predecessors upon earth should not 
have made sacrifices for you, equal to those now asked 
of you for others, rather than that you should have 
been deprived of the gospel ? Take, with this, the 
eternal bearings of the case, and surely you cannot 
sit with a closed hand. 

5. " But, after all the missionary and other con- 
tributions and efforts in the past, Christianity seems 
to gain but slowly upon false systems." 

If this be true, is not the cause to be found, award- 
ing all due praise for past donations, in the dispropor- 
• tion between them and both the ability of the church 
and the financial calls of aggressive work ? At the 
same time, false systems have had hundreds of mil- 
lions of superstitious devotees in the habit of making 
large pecuniary sacrifices.^ _ 

^ Listen to a foreign missionary in regard to Brahmin dona- 
tions. "But it is to the almost incredible profusion of the 
offerings presented at such festivals, that we would desire to 
call your special attention. In general, it may be said, that 
the bulk of the people, rich and poor, expend by far the larger 
moiety of their earnings or income on offerings to idols, and the 
countless rites and exhibitions connected with idol worship. 
At the celebration of one festival, a wealthy native has been 
known to offer after this manner: eighty thousand pounds 
weight of sweetmeats; eighty thousand pounds weight of 
Bugar ; a thousand suits of cloth garments ; a thousand suits of 
Bilk; a thousand offerings of rice, plantain, and other fruits. 



106 A WONDER. 

There is no more cause to wonder that Paganism 
dies hard than that Popery does/ The contributions 
of the votaries of both should put to shame many 
enlightened souls living under a pure gospel. 

Yet, let not the victories of the cross be overlooked 
— victories in spite of obstacles. In view of the 
adaptation of false systems, not only of Mohamme- 
danism, and its modernized edition Mormonism, and 
not only of Paganism in her own features, but 
especially of Paganism masked under Roman Catho- 
licism — in view of the adaptation of these to the 
gratification of the propensities of the natural man — • 
the wonder is, not that Christianity has spread no 
further in this world, but that it has spread at all — 
indeed, that it has any foot-hold. It is opposed to 

On another occasion, a wealthy native has been known to have 
expended upwards of tJiirty tliousand pounds sterling on the 
offerings, the observances, and the exhibition of a single festi- 
val ; and upwards of ten thousand pounds annually y ever after- 
wards, to the termination of his life/' — India and India Mis- 
sions, by Rev, A. Duff, D. D., pp. 230, 231. Edinburgh, 1839. 
^ Few readers need to be informed of the taxations of Popery, 
successfully imposed upon its purgatory-fearing subjects, upon 
the wealthy in large and periodical amounts, and upon indigent 
domestics, in considerable proportions of their weekly wages. 
It would be well if the intelligent fears of Protestants, for them- 
selves and others, would draw to such systematic liberality as 
do the blind fears of Papists, as well as of Pagans. 



FIRE ON EARTH. 107 

the desires of fallen man. A rock of itself would not 
ascend a mountain. Then the Everlasting Arm is 
underneath the gospel. The false systems are masses 
naturally descending along the mountain of humanity, 
by their gravitation towards hell. But full gospel 
sway in one soul, after the employment of all the 
instrumentalities of the church, is a Divine victory — 
a something contrary to the natural course of things — 
a miracle. It is an achievement which would be far 
more wonderful and grand than the spread of a bad 
system over all mankind to the end of time. 

The Christian may indeed glory in the cross. 

It may be replied, further, to the excuse under 
consideration, that the past rate of gospel conquests 
is no necessary index to the future. Holy fire, like 
natural fire, may for some time be catching slowly at 
scattered points, and then in materials more prepared, 
and under an influence " from Heaven as of a rush- 
ing mighty wind,'' become suddenly and surprisingly 
general. The increasing preparations in such large 
portions as China, Hindostan, and Turkey, may 
soon conspire, with the power from on high, to set the 
earth in a blaze. In this great sense may Christ be 
about ready '^ to send fire on earth." In view of all 
these facts, let not covetousness hope to be guiltless 
in withholding means, under the short-sighted plea of 
past slowness of conquests. 



108 CAREFUL COUNSEL. 

6. " Granting that the missionary and other enter- 
prises are fully deserving, may I not indulge in doubts 
of the worthiness of some other channels for my money, 
in the church?" 

If you could be justified in such doubts, you would 
still be bound to give according to ability, as a steward 
for God; the difference being a division of your 
benefactions among a smaller number of causes — those 
you acknowledge to be deserving. 

As the worthiness of the different departments in 
the church has been presented (pp. 45-50), but few 
remarks will be made here. Observe, that you can 
be more confident that the various church enterprises 
are deserving of money than any of your own private 
schemes for which you may retain it. Some of the 
church enterprises are specifically instituted by inspi- 
ration. The others have been started with careful 
counsel and forecast, by many Christians of clear 
minds and expansive hearts, in whose united wisdom, 
and guidance from heaven, you can have more confi- 
dence than in your own alone. In the "multitude 
of counsellors" for the church, there must be more 
probability of correctness, than in the decisions of 
any one man, especially in his own affairs, where 
selfishness is so ready to pervert judgment. We are 
not maintaining the infallibility of the church, but 



KERNBLS AND SHELLS. 109 

that there is more danger of error for one man, in his 
own schemes, than there is in the church. 

Do you ask proof of the apostolic authority of the 
church of your choice, so far as there can be any 
succession of such authority, to originate and give 
character to great enterprises? Behold it in its 
ability to say to hundreds of thousands, " Need I, as 
eome others, epistles of commendation to you, or 
letters of commendation from you ? Ye are our 
epistle.'' You know that such a one is a church, as 
to experimental inward things. And you can indeed 
conclude, if God vouchsafe these the greater cha- 
racteristics. He hardly withholds the less — the forms. 
In making the genuine kernels to grow and ripen. He 
has doubtless allowed enough of the shells. This is 
better than to have the shells alone gathered up for 
exhibition and boasting. 

7. "I was not consulted in the arranging of the 
church's enterprises." 

Some of them were arranged before your birth. 
As to others, a general council of church members 
could not have well been had. No disrespect was 
intended to you. As many were consulted as Divine 
providence seemed to permit — among whom there were 
wisdom and a single eye, which you would not put 
beneath your own. They would gladly have mingled 
your counsels with theirs, had circumstances allowed. 
10 



110 WHY SELL TO RAISE CASH. 

8. Some reader whose past omission of system has 
resulted in an undue accumulation, may say that he 
" cannot, at once, secure cash due the cause of God 
without selling at some sacrifice." 

But this excuse cannot justify delay, if the sacri- 
fice from sales will be less than the benefits to church 
enterprises from speediness of supply of funds. Remem- 
ber, that in the kingdom of grace every moment counts, 
according to its situation in the stream of time. A 
moment now, surcharged with right influences to accu- 
mulate at a threefold rate through many periods of 
time, as have been moments in the days of the Apos- 
tles, or even of Luther, or of Knox, or of Wesley — a 
moment thus surcharged now, might count for a 
thousandfold more by the end of time, than might a 
moment, after the delay of a few years or even 
months. How great, then, it might be incidentally 
asked, is the error of delaying for the last will to 
appropriate money for gospel ends ? 

But, granting that, in a very few cases, there should 
be some postponement — though not indeed until 
death — before the church treasurers can count the 
Lord's share in cash, even in such cases, each steward 
can acquit himself, without any delay, by legally trans- 
ferring that share, in its present form^ to the control 
of the Lord's Zion. If this proposal touches a tender 
string in any heart, and begets a painful vibration, is 



BITTERNESS AND SWEETS. HI 

ii Aot because it brings a test to the secret motive 
---and to the sincerity of professions of designs for 
the future ? Can he be spiritually safe who does not 
obtain his heart's consent to such a test ? 

The excuse "I am in debt/* when much more than 
the amount owed is possessed in value, may be con- 
sidered in this connection. The debts could be paid 
were some sacrifices made at present, or in prospect. 
If a man has a pound, idle in a napkin, he may not be 
excused before God by the plea of owing a few pence. 
A man may go through life, in reality worth much 
more than the Lord allows him, under Zion's pressing 
calls for money, and yet, for a pretext to withhold, or 
under speculating investments, he may ever be ready 
to say, "I am in debt." 

In the case of those who really do owe beyond abi- 
lity for payment, systematic justice may prepare the 
way for systematic beneficence. Some debtors — by 
self-denial, so healthful for body and spirit — may with 
industry leave secure a stream of income to accumu- 
late sufficient for creditors, as surely as that afterwards 
the same stream may furnish something for beneficence. 
The bitterness of self-denial will be far less than the 
sweets to a healthy conscience of paying debts, as well 
as afterwards of bestowing, however little, to the cause 
of God. 

9. " Before giving upon system, I would attain to 



11^ A FEAR. 

a certain amount which seems to me needful for myself 
and dependants." Are your own affairs so much more 
important than those of Zion, that they should have 
an overplus accruing, while there is no distribution to 
the under-furnished ones of Zion ? And may not God 
see that the overplus aimed at would not be best for 
yourself or your family, in that spiritual sense, which 
he keeps graciously in view ? Hence, in your eager 
efforts to attain it, with omission of systematic giving 
of part of your gains, may you not fight against a kind 
Providence, to suffer chagrin if disappointed, or fear- 
ful judicial consequences, if successful? If, how- 
ever, the amount fixed on be appropriate and safe, 
may it not be attained in connection with systematic 
bestowments from your gains, and your soul be kept 
safe by the guard, so necessary, as we have seen? 
Indeed, in this course of giving, if God sees best, your 
gains towards the proper amount may be the more 
rapid. " There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth.'* 

10. Whether with little or much to bestow, do you 
say, " I fear my contributions might not be economi- 
cally, if honestly, applied by others ?" 

If this were not an absurd fear, it would still be 
your duty, as a steward for God, to give all you could, 
and, so far as you lacked confidence in others, to apply 
it in some way yourself. So, no money could be con- 
sistently withheld on this plea. 



EIGHT PROPORTION. 113 

Butj upon examination, you will find at the points 
of church expenditure, men having watch in whom 
you will not hesitate to repose full confidence. And 
you will scarcely desire to accompany missionaries to 
foreign shores to examine bills for payment, or to have 
the task of seeing how the books or tracts are dis- 
posed of in laborious walks of colportage, or to over- 
see disbursements in any other department. Though, 
if you choose to do so, after having given your money, 
you need not fear being repulsed at these spheres of 
action. 

Even if it seems to you that there is in some 
instances too much incidental or preliminary expense, 
in extending saving influences — if, without the know- 
ledge of estimating committees, in regard to necessary 
expenses of men in service, you do not understand 
the propriety of some allowances for salary, or some- 
thing else — yet you cannot consistently withhold 
funds, when it is perfectly apparent that these pre- 
liminary expenses will be met at any rate, and that 
what you give will add to the amount for perishing 
souls ; and that therefore, if you withhold, you with- 
hold from perishing souls. 

11. " I may give more than my proportion, if I 
bestow liberally upon system through life." 

No ; for that will be the proportion God requires. 
And ^J, at your death-bed review, the aggregate could 
10* 



114 MORE THAN ONE-TENTH. 

look too large, it would only be by comparison "with 
the donations of those who come short of their propor- 
tion, and who may come short of rewards in heaven. 
But leave others to God, while lovingly rebuking 
them, at least by example. You may have more light 
than they. Are you sorry for this ? Crreater lights 
though it leaves the delinquent soul to sink the lower, 
puts the obedient soul in a way to rise the higher. 
Think of this. 

12, '' I am uncertain as to what proportion of my 
gains I should subject to systematic givings.*'^ 

This is better than if you were confined to a fixed 
rate by specific revelation, for your mind is left free 
to choose nobly, cheerfully, and the more acceptably 
to Him who "loveth a cheerful giver.'* 

If you err a little at first, in contributing more 
than your circumstances p^mit, the evil can soon be 
corrected, and will be less than that of no system ; 
and you had better err on the spiritually/, than the 
temporally, safe side. It will not hurt your heart, if 
you commence with too much. It may, if you com- 

^ That one-tenth is the minimum required, the reader will 
hardly doubt after perusing " The Great Question, by Rev. L. 
White," one of the three excellent Prize Essays lately issued by 
the Tract Society of the M. E. Church. But that Essay, as 
well as this, insists on the obligation to volu«<ary beneficence 
exceeding one-tenth according to ability. 



HESITATION. 115 

mence with too little. Besides, it will be easier for 
you to fall in the proportion of giving, than to rise. 
And, if you estimate a little too high at first, will you 
not suffer less evil temporally^ than would the cause 
of God and your own soul spiritually^ in being 
deprived of the happy influences of the Apostle's rule 
for system ? But, if there were neither much reason, 
nor much practicability in regular and frequent giving 
in your own case by itself, yet the force of your ex- 
ample might be drawing others to duty, who can best 
practise upon such a plan, tod who may neither be 
safe nor effectively beneficent without. 

When a longer period than a week is inevitable, a 
donor can make it as short as possible. 

13. " I may be kept hesitating, in order to ascer- 
tain the comparative merits of the church's enter- 
prises, so as rightly to divide my donations among 
them." 

As Zion's enterprises are all so good, and as the 
success of each one tends to secure that of others, if 
you give to all equally, it will be more acceptable to 
God than for you to remain inactive till your sense 
of responsibility subsides. While you are waiting, 
your money might be securing more good in secondary 
departments of Christian benevolence, by an imme- 
diate and cumulative influence, than it may, if delayed, 
in the primary ones. But you need not be long in 



116 TRANSMISSION. 

doubt as to comparative claims, if you sincerely 
resolve to part with money. "Yea, if thou criest 
after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for under- 
standing ; if thou seekest her as silver^ and searchest 
for her as for hid treasures^ then shalt thou under- 
stand." (Prov. ii. 3-5.) There will be an orderly 
evolving of light from the providence of God, the 
bearings of the church, and the counsels of well- 
informed Christians. Be sure to read attentively the 
Annual Reports, and the periodicals of the church, 
which are specially fitted to acquaint you with the 
current condition of this wicked world, and of the 
renovating agencies of Zion. 

14. " The treasuries of the church may not be at 
hand, for the reception of frequent systematic bestow- 
ments." 

Some of them are, and to those distant, you can 
send your contributions by mail, or some other medium. 
Would it not be desirable, in all possible cases, to 
,have them secured for early transmission with the 
gifts of other church members of your locality, upon 
some general plan appropriate to circumstances, as 
did the ancient Jew and primitive Christian ? Thus, 
system would be joined to system. Can you not be 
instrumental in starting such a plan, and facilitating 
its execution ? If this be impracticable, your own 
will can at least make a way for your own donations. 



"I AM BUT ONE." 117 

And if, in your locality, you should a^vhile appear 
singular in faithfulness to system, your example will 
not be lost. Though many jewels are preferable to 
one, yet one may shine the more, if set in jet. 

15. " I am but one in the church, and the aggregate 
of systematic contributions from me may make no 
observable difference in the great mass of results." 

As God is no respecter of persons, if you are 
released on this ground, so are all others. And where 
can be the river without the drops ? 

But if even a dew-drop remain upon a leaf after 
the sun has long been shining, the great thing to be 
noticed is, not that the vast ocean is to lack that little 
drop, but that there is a fixed law transgressed : tJie 
dew does not yield to solar attraction. If God were 
to permit this, though in the case of a single drop, it 
would perplex his sons that shouted for joy at the 
creation. And if, in a cold night of ignorant selfish- 
jaess, you have settled upon earth, and under the Sun 
of Righteousness, long since blazing from the east, 
now refuse to surrender your substance towards the 
aggregate of the vast results which may be looked for 
in His kingdom, then the judgment-book will present 
to you, not only the ocean of results robbed, hut your 
wilful transgression of law. Depend upon it, no 
Divine indifference to such transgression will permit 
ieaven to be perplexed. 



118 INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 

And even the dew-drop to be exhaled must be 
exhaled systematically, not irregularly, as shaken by 
uncertain trembling of a leaf, but according to laws 
inherent in the solar rays, and in itself. So, if you 
■would be acquitted as having contributed aright to 
God's cause, you must let the laws of your being fall 
in with the revealed laws and the attractions of the 
Sun of Righteousness. You must adopt system in 
beneficence. 

What if the principle of one making but little dif- 
ference be applied to your individual self at the gate 
of heaven ! There will be a great multitude inside. 
You will scarcely be missed. And is not your mind 
stored with sufficient facts in regard to the duty of 
systematic beneficence, to lead you to fear exclusion 
from heaven as a possible result of delinquency ? 

In inquisition for the blood of souls, which will 
assuredly be made in the great day, will the Judge 
contemplate the church of the nineteenth century 
merely as a collective unity? Will the judgment 
proceed' upon men in a mass, or upon them severally, 
each in his individual identity ? Will not each church 
member be as surely dealt with in regard to a vast 
church delinquency, in which he knowingly had a 
part, as in regard to any solitary delinquency ? And, 
in the rewards of the final day, who believes that a 
church, on account of its victorious marches for Im- 



EECAPITULATION. 119 

manuel, will be regarded in its collective capacity 
only ? Will not each faithful member have his own 
reward ? 

Then, dear reader, if you act your personal part, 
while no other one acts his, or if all others unite with 
you in the blessed work, your portion of joy will be 
sure. "Every one of us must give account of him- 
self to God,'' and there will be no loss of individual 
identity in heaven or hell. 

16. "If I am right in all else, I shall not greatly 
fear from omission in this one thing.'' 

But can you be "right in all else," if you fail in 
this? Does not "the love of money" here, involve 
a wrong spirit towards God and man, which, indeed, 
may become " the root of all evil," in your case ? 

Can you be right, in general, towards God and man, 
if, with unreasonable excuses, yQU allow your affections 
to flow in a channel which diverts from the greatest 
work on this globe, if not in the universe, the supply 
most needed — a supply which God's word commands, 
and is suggested by holy examples, by your past reli- 
gious exercises, and by pressing wants and worthy 
agencies ; a supply enjoined, in system and steadiness, 
as well as largeness, by gratitude for the unspeakable 
and systematic beneficence of God to us, and by direct 
inspiration, — by examples of illustrious saints, and by 



120 "ONE THING.'' 

the prospects of most glorious results to the church, 
and to your own soul ? 

Is a trifling thing then omitted, even if it be re- 
duced to " one thing" not only in your own words, but 
also in the Saviour's words to a certain young man ? 
(Mark x. 21.) And if any such young man would enter 
into life, or if you would, must there not be a surren- 
der of possessions, according to the Divine direction, 
either wholly, or in part at once, and in future parts, 
upon system ? And might you not as well disbelieve 
your ears if you were accosted by the voice which 
addressed the young man, as to disbelieve the call to 
enlarged and systematic beneficence made upon you 
by Scripture injunction, — by the Saviour, and by the 
Spii'it, and by the bride, and by the common sense of 
liim that heareth. Surely you will not, as did the 
infatuated young man, go " away sorrowful," but 
resolutely go forward to the rewards of heaven, in the 
duty of enlarged and systematic beneficence. 



CHAPTER VI. 

ADVICES AS TO IMMEDIATE BENEFICENT ACTION. 

The remarks now to be submitted, it is hoped, will 
not prove unwelcome or unprofitable to any reader 
who may be resolved upon duty. But tbey will aim 
at loving, though plain, dealing with wavering and 
endangered readers. 

1. Prayer. 

If you have not decided, from the depths of your 
whole soul, upon faithfulness in enlarged and system- 
atic beneficence, be entreated to take at once the 
most appropriate step for your own safety, in view of 
what has been presented, by raising your heart in 
importunate prayer for Divine aid to enable you to 
decide according to light received. You will thus soon 
find yourself enabled to make the needful resolve. 
As you receive the spiritual aid, decide^ decide at once, 
before the gracious ability be trifled away. 

2. Now is the easiest time. 

Having just given attention to the subject, and, 

under the moving of God's Spirit, its claims being 

freshly impressed upon your heart, it is easier for you 

to yield now than it can ever be after teaching that 

heart a lesson of resistance. If you pass through 
11 (121) 



122 CHEERFULNESS. 

one struggle against the Spirit, with your volition 
rampant in disobedience, the future may bring no 
remedy. The laws of your mind, and of your moral 
agency, may not permit a more full contemplation 
and comprehension of the duty, and of the motives to 
its performance. The Divine Spirit will never be 
more strongly operative. You will never be younger 
nor more pliable. Satan will have no less influence 
over you. Alas ! there may be no hope, if, when the 
metal is softened to the utmost of available heat, the 
controlling hand relax from efl*ort, because of diflS- 
culty, while that hand is steadily to grow weaker. 

3. Decide in love. 

Though you are plainly, and you may think 
severely, warned of the danger from indecision, yet 
let not this prevent your deciding in love — in love to 
God and your fellows, as well as yourself. As you 
flee to escape the doom of the covetous man, you may 
flee with your eye fixed on bright and heavenly 
motives. Determine to give your money in love. 
" God is love." If you would act fully aright in and 
by him, you must attain a loving frame of mind. 
Will you not struggle in prayer till you find yourself 
in such a frame? "God loveth a cheerful giver." 
He is such a giver himself. Love only can secure 
you the cheerfulness with which he sympathizes. 
Have likeness to the Deity in love, in order to com- 



SOMETHING NARROW. 123 

munion and harmony of spirit with him. Be a branch 
supported in life and fruitfulness by the sweet mysti- 
cal element which enlivens the Infinite vine. Then 
will you '^ bring forth much fruit." 

4. To he only almost resolved is to fail. 

This is an axiom needing no comment, but deserv- 
ing careful attention. 

5. You must resolve at a given point of time. 
There is no diffusing present moments. You can 

never spread an act of volition over a space of time, 
and thus make it easier. After obtaining full light 
upon any path of duty, there is not, to use a figure, 
a yard square, whereon to turn around — " thinking 
of it" — to make decision easier. Between your pre- 
sent standing point and the realities of eternity, you 
will find only just space enough, as it were, for your 
feet, as you pass along upon mere points — individual 
nows. At each successive step the past moment will 
be for ever gone, and the future not possessed. Wait 
long as you may— like the open sinner in Satan's 
latest reserved trap, procrastination — you will still find 
yourself narrowed down to a single now. Oh I then, 
grapple for your life, and for the life of others, at 
once. Decide fully now^ Now, upon enlarged and 
systematic beneficence. 

6. There is a critical point. 

With you there must be one critical point of time 



124 A TEST. 

(perhaps just now being attained), in the consideration 
of beneficence, when, like the boat upon the shore, at 
the highest tide's most extended "wave, you must at 
once be set decidedly in motion, or remain decidedly 
motionless. That point may be at the very moment 
you close the present sentence ; and, in your reflec- 
tions, either '' incline your ear and live" to full pur- 
pose, or secretly, in dread of the cross, incline your 
ear to Satan's suggestion to " think of it a little 
while," that little while to serve his purpose of divert- 
ing your attention from the fresh force of the subject, 
so that, when your mind adverts to it again, with a 
once cultivated desire to evade action, you will per- 
petrate a second delay with increased ease, and so on 
to cool dismissal and fatal forgetfulness of the duty. 

Surely you have not dared to evade a right decision. 

7. Try your resolution hy action. 

After deciding aright, with all needful firmness, as 
you may suppose, be sure to seek an early opportunity 
to try your resolution hy action. This will test it. 
If you do not seek a point for the first act of suitable 
beneficence, or if, when the point arrives (which you 
can make speedy), you find yourself hesitating and 
inclined to think a little further, you have surely 
deceived yourself as to a decision. Oh for firmness ! 
May God energize your whole soul ! 



BOLDNESS AND PERSEVERANCE. 125 

8. Fear not carnal criticism. 

Beware of pride in the heart, which would draw it 
to hesitate and grow cold (too cold to act at all), under 
the idea of acting before critical worldlings, or luke- 
warm professors, with "coolness" — without appear- 
ance of "sudden excitement." 

Shall Satan take us captive, as he does gross sinners, 
who sit back from the altar of penitential prayer, 
lest some brazen and callous spectators charge them 
with fright ? Will foolish pride and hesitancy from 
fear of man, where the path of duty commences, be 
more tolerable in us than in those never renewed ? 
Let us look to ourselves. 

9. Never intermit in the discharge of this duty. 
Be entreated to enter upon action, deeply resolved 

against avoidable breaks in the system of giving. It 
cannot, indeed, be enough to attempt pacifying con- 
science with only a start in the right course. But do 
not forget, even when aiming at general punctuality, 
that any one unnecessary omission may make another 
more easy, and that one a third, and so on to a full 
relapse. 

10. Keep in view spiritual ends. 

In order to be sustained through life in cheerful 
faithfulness, as a financial steward, ever cultivate 
lively views of the spiritual ends to which your con- 
tributions are adapted. . Thus, you will find yourself 
11* 



126 "GAIN ALL YOU CAN." 

drawn to an exercise healthful for yourself and for 
others — the offering of prayers for great results in 
the kingdom of grace. And you will be kept, not 
only in the practice of out^yard acts of beneficence, 
but free from mere formality in that routine, and free 
from a spirit of servitude. You will not act as a 
bondman, but a son. 

11. Be decided once for all. 

Be on your guard against the strong tendency of 
the mind, after it has arrived at a correct conclusion 
upon full reasons, to waver, when, occupied with other 
subjects, those reasons hover at a distance. 

In any hesitancy thus arising, raise your heart for 
Divine aid, that, having for sound reasons once 
volunteered in a course of the greatest moment to the 
Church of Christ, and to the world, and to your own 
soul, you may not prove a renegade. 

12. Grain all you can^ so as to give the more. 
Follow Mr. Wesley's directions: — "These cautions 

and restrictions being observed, it is the bounden duty 
of all who are engaged in worldly business to observe 
that first and great rule of Christian wisdom, with 
respect to money. Gain all you can. Gain all you 
can by honest industry. Use all possible diligence 
in your calling. Lose no time. If you understand 
yourself, and your relation to God and man, you 
know you have none to spare. If you understand 



GAIN ALL YOU CAN. 127 

your particular calling, as you ought, you will have 
no time that hangs upon your hands. Every business 
will afford some employment suflScient for every day 
and every hour. That wherein you are placed, if you 
follow it in earnest, will leave you no leisure for silly, 
unprofitable diversions. You have always something 
better to do, something that will profit you, more or 
less. And ' whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it 
with thy might.' Do it as soon as possible : no delay ! 
no putting off from day to day, or from hour to hour ! 
Never leave anything till to-morrow which you can 
do to-day. And do it as well as possible. Do not 
sleep or yawn over it : put your whole strength to the 
work. Spare no pains. Let nothing be done by 
halves, or in a slight and careless manner. Let 
nothing in your business be left undone, if it can be 
done by labor or patience. 

^' Gain all you can, by common sense, by using in 
your business all the understanding which God has 
given you. It is amazing to observe how few do this ; 
how men run in the same dull track with their fore- 
fathers. But whatever they do who know not God, 
this is no rule for you. It is a shame for a Christian 
not to improve upon them in whatever he takes in 
hand. You should be continually learning from the 
experience of others, or from your own experience, 
reading, and reflection, to do everything you have to 



128 HOW TO ESTIMATE. 

do better to-day than you did yesterday. And see 
that you practise whatever you learn, that you may 
make the best of all that is in your hands. "^ 

13. How to make an estimate of 'proportion of gains 
to he given. 

Having your heart honestly and fully determined 
on duty, you might derive some help towards the 
correct estimate of the amount now due the Divine 
treasury, and of extent, in proportion of future income, 

(1.) By deciding how much you could lose hy provi- 
dential dispensations^ and still neither yourself nor 
your family suffer. Cheerfully surrender what God 
may providentially take away without inflicting real 
injury. 

(2.) Imagine yourself as you either once were, or 
may be, not possessing any worldly goods, and in a 
pious mood deciding what you would bestow to church 
enterprises, upon condition of your enjoying the 
prosperity with which you are actually favored. May 
not the pledge which you must suppose coming from 
yourself in such a prospect, be the one now Divinely 
required of you? Verily it is, for, ''as Grod hath 
prospered,'' is the rule of inspiration. (1 Cor. xvi. 2.) 
Here is a way for light in making your estimate. 

14. Will you not record your vow P 

Having heartily decided and fixed upon your suit- 

^ Wesley's Works, vol. i. p. 444. 



RECORD THE VOW. 129 

able proportion, you cannot reasonably object to 
secure yourself the more in the path of duty, by 
signing a form of pecuniary consecration. 

And might it not be well to place it, or a copy of 
it, at the commencement of a blank account-book for 
the entry of what you may " lay by in store" for God, 
and how it may be expended. 

If you object to signing such a form, may there not 
be a hidden defect in your resolution ? If there were 
no such defect, would you feel free to evade a strong 
guard to the mind, as a written pledge confessedly 
must be ? Can you intelligently refuse the recorded 
vow to the Lord, from fear of possibly making the 
matter worse by breaking it in the future ? No ; for 
if you are too undecided to put your name to paper, 
are you not making a certainty of grieving God by 
indecision, upon a question perfectly clear to your 
conscience ? Do you choose the present certainty of 
sin, instead of a future 'possibility of the same ? To 
be safe — to avoid sinning against light — must you 
not vow, at least in your mindy to be beneficent up to 
your ability ? To record this vow, is not to expose 
yourself to regrets for having broken it, but to intro- 
duce an important stay against breaking it. 

If you change the following form, will you not 
adopt something more expressive of your own firm- 
ness, and yet of your dependence upon Divine aid : — 



130 CONCLUSION. 

'' I hereby, once for all, with my whole heart, in 
earnest prayer for Divine assistance, resolve that, 
during my life upon earth, I will devote to the enter- 
prises of the church of Christ, as much, and as fre- 
quently, of my worldly goods, as my impartial 
conscience may decide to be my duty : and for the 

present I fix on as now due, and on 

as the proportion of subsequent profits or income, to 
be paid [here name the stated times], which propor- 
tion and times, at least once a year, are to be re* 
viewed, and, if practicable, increased, in obedience to 
the first part of this resolution/' 

[Here date.] . [Here signature.] 

In conclusion upon the subject of beneficence, we 
will venture to remind you that you are acting under 
the eye of God. If you fail in rightly contributing, 
He will not fail to keep an account. 

And when the "books" of the last day shall be 
"opened" (Rev. xx. 12), it will be seen what you 
might have laid ^^by in store" on each " first day of 
the week," or with some frequency, and how it might 
have been distributed in life-giving channels. In that 
^^y^ if 2/^^ forget on earthy will come up in your 
memory for full review the truths upon beneficence 
which have now passed before you. 



A FIELD FOR HEROISM.^ 

ADDRESSED TO PRIVATE MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH, 
MALE AND FEMALE, — AS WELL AS TO YOUNG MINIS- 
TERS. 



Are you ambitious for a notable sphere of action ? 
Eternity, not seventy years, is your lifetime. Heaven, 
not this earth, nor hell, is the true circuit for fame. 
You are amid subtile and sublime elements of battle. 
The field is the world. The foe is sin. The force to 
oppose it is the Gospel. The agents are Christians. 
You are one, or should soon become one. You are 
living under a personal responsibility, in regard to 
the most startling lack of this age,' if not of all ages. 
The light of evangelical truth is withheld from a great 
majority of mankind. Hundreds of millions are 
groping in the dark. Death will introduce but few 
of them, indeed, into an unpolluted heaven, unless 
death can save from pollution. You will proflfer your 
individual efforts either as a lay-helper, or as a preacher ; 

^ Some months since, the writer furnished, in substance, this 
and the succeeding article to the Tract Society of the M. E. 
Church (Tracts 471, 472) ; but he is constrained to insert them 
here, from a sense of the importance of the duties they incul- 
cate. 

(131) 



132 A QUALIFICATION. 

or, by needless delay, indecision, or refusal, you may 
bring upon yourself the responsibility of this fearful 
destitution. Do you say, " I never felt called to mis- 
sionary work" ? How do you suppose any one is 
called at the present day ? By an audible voice from 
heaven ? or by Scripture light, combined with a know- 
ledge of the state of the world, addressed to a tender, 
teachable, and inquiring conscience, under the influ- 
ence of the Holy Spirit and the appeals of the church? 
Has not God allotted to probationers the task of 
attentively searching for the path of duty ? He may 
no more force them to discern that path than he will 
forcibly thrust them into it when discovered. 

The truth is, an unreserved surrender to Crod must 
be the only full qualification for receiving light from 
him, and an impression of duty which conflicts strongly 
with the natural desires. After such a surrender, 
you will construe Scripture candidly in regard to the 
heaviest cross. ^' Go ye into all the world, and preach 
the Gospel to every creature.'' If rightly consecra- 
ted, you will not view this as addressed to others only, 
but you will begin by allowing that, at least, it may 
be addressed to you ; passive under Divine influence, 
you will feel drawn to gratify the Divine desire. It 
is the desire of Him who is " the same yesterday, and 
to-day, and for ever.'' Centuries of time cannot lessen 
its intensity, while he contemplates the hellward course 



BE "WISE" AND "SHINE." 133 

of immense masses of heathen souls. If fully con- 
secrated, you will not seek ease of conscience at home, 
by constructing antagonisms to the Divine command, 
or a loose theory of the probable safety of the 
heathen. 

In the spirit of full consecration, we beseech you 
to reflect upon the following : " He that winneth souls 
is wise." "And they that be wise shall shine as the 
brightness of the firmament ; and they that turn many 
to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever." 
"Therefore, to him that knoweth to do good, and 
doeth it not, to him it is sin." You will not interpret 
these passages so as to keep out of view the severest 
cross-bearing for yourself. You will not leave for 
others their application to the most arduous and the 
most needy field of efibrt. You will be convinced 
that if, at last, among the "wise" that will "shine 
as the stars for ever and ever," you must be "wise" 
now in " winning souls ;" and " shine" now as a " light 
in the world," so as to do the good which you "know 
to do," of the highest kind, to perishing, immortal 
souls. 

When fully consecrated, you will not, in a strange 
hallucination, devolve the evangelization of the hea- 
then upon the church as a hody^ irrespective of indi- 
vidual effort ; but you will be quite aware that nothing 
is done by a Church, excepting as particular members 
12 



134 WISDOM TO DIRECT. 

act. You will infer that, until the foreign fields have 
a supply in relative proportion to that of the domes- 
tic, no single individual can escape God's severe cen- 
sure for unqualified refusal or needless delay. 

The cross of departing will not fill your consecra- 
ted spirit with anguish. The burden will be made 
light by burning love to Christ and souls, and by 
respect to the rewarding ^^ weight of glory.'' 

If, after months and years of full gospel light, by 
failing of full consecration, you fail to become the 
salt of the earth to the most needy parts of it, are 
you quite sure that you will pass from this life safely ? 
We beseech you to consider calmly, and determine, 
as in the presence of Him who searcheth the heart. 

Do you say, " There is a great work to be done at 
home" ? True, and the most needy part of it is mis- 
sionary work, where churches are yet feeble. But 
this work is under the oversight of official men, who 
survey a world-wide field for gospel efi*ort. If, in 
a spirit of entire consecration, you consent to mis- 
sionary service, then the wisdom of these men will 
assign you a post. In regard to your designation, 
you will certainly allow the wisdom of those at the 
head of ecclesiastical afiairs, and who are surrounded 
by able clerical and lay advisers, to be as deserving 
of trust as that of an interested individual. You 
cannot, therefore, reasonably fear that an unreserved 



THE HARVEST AND THE LABORERS. 135 

surrender to the cause of missions will remove you to 
foreign fields, unless you be most needed there. Jea- 
lousy for the home work may arise from a lack of 
consecration, instead of a warrantable fear of recre- 
ancy to that work. In response to a recent inquiry 
into the convictions and plans of students, in fourteen 
leading colleges, out of five hundred and forty-six 
preparing for the ministry, it was ascertained that 
only forty are contemplating the missionary work. Is 
there a valid excuse for this disproportion ? 
Look into one part of the vast foreign field : — 
" One of the judges of the Calcutta court has just 
published a volume setting forth the claims of British 
India as a field for missions. It comprises, according 
to the most recent computation, an area of one mil- 
lion three hundred and fifty-five thousand and two 
hundred square miles, and contains a population 
amounting to one hundred and seventy millions — all 
of whom are accessible to the messengers of the gos- 
pel. The number of missionaries, including those of 
all denominations, bears, however, no proportion to this 
vast population. Rajjputana, with seventeen millions 
of inhabitants, has no missionary ; Oudh, with three 
millions, has none ; Nagpore, with four millions five 
hundred thousand, has two; the Nizam's territory, 
with ten millions, has none ; Scinde, with one million 
five hundred thousand, has one missionary ; Gwalior, 



136 DESTITUTION INDEED. 

with three millions, has none ; Nepal, with two millions, 
has none. Many great cities and towns are in a like 
state of spiritual destitution. The author gives a list 
of sixty-five populous towns in the north-western pro- 
vinces, none of which have a missionary. 

" The great city of Lahore has only two ; Furruck- 
abad, with a population of a hundred and thirty-two 
thousand five hundred and thirteen, and Mirzapore, 
with seventy-five thousand and twelve, have only the 
same number. Meerut with more than forty thou- 
sand, Muttra with more than sixty-five thousand, 
and Cawnpore with a hundred and eighteen thou- 
sand, have only one each ; so it is with Salem and 
Cudapah, in the Madras Presidency. In like manner 
many important places, in various parts of the coun- 
try, which, from special circumstances, deserve parti- 
cular attention, and are spheres of great influence or 
celebrity, have not a single missionary. Thus it is 
with Ajmere, Bhurtpore, Brindabun, Santipore, Pur- 
neah, Gwalior, Mooltan, and Jhansi." — Christian 
Advocate and Journal. 

Such facts are startling. Surely, no man will say 
home calls are paramount. The home field is not 
quite so destitute. You are not quite as much needed 
at home. 

Are you already, or about to be, engrossed in 
secular pursuits? Ponder the words of one, who 



CHOICE OF PROFESSION. 137 

made the sacrifice he urges upon others, addressed 
" To pious young laymen." " Let me entreat you, my 
young brother, for a moment to cast your eyes over 
our own land and over heathen lands. Such a survey 
will constrain you to exclaim, ' The harvest is great, 
*and the laborers are few/ You will also be con- 
strained to make the exclamation, 'We must have 
more laborers, or Christ will be dishonored, and mil- 
lions of souls must be lost.' Perhaps you have often 
made this exclamation. Then why are you not minis- 
ters of the gospel ? Why is it that you have chosen 
to be farmers, or merchants, or mechanics, or lawyers, 
or physicians ? 

'' I am not aware that there is any dearth in any 
of the professions just alluded to, as there is a dearth 
in the profession of the ministry ; and I can see no 
particular call from God which should have constrained 
you to join their ranks. Have you not a call to the 
ministry ? Let the first question you ask yourselves 
in the morning be, Am I going to glorify my Saviour 
to-day by not setting my face toward the ministry ? 
and let the last question you ask yourselves at night 
be. Have I glorified God to-day by not setting my 
face toward the ministry ? While engaged on your 
farms, in your shops, in your law, or in your medicine, 
often put the question to your consciences : Do I 
believe my God looks down upon me with as much 
12* 



138 A REQUEST. 

approbation as he would, provided I were now engaged 
as a minister, laboring in the vineyard of his Son ? 
Whether you, beloved brethren, think of it or not, it 
is a most melancholy truth, that more than forty 
thousand millions of the heathen have gone into 
eternity since Christ lifted up his voice and cried, ' It 
is finished ;' and that fifty thousand are dying every 
day, and passing into eternity without any prepara- 
tion to meet God ! dying without any one to pity 
them! And can you stand quietly still and see 
multitudes thus perish ? 

" If, however, notwithstanding what has been urged, 
you believe the command of Christ, ' Go and preach 
the gospel,' does not apply to you, I request each of 
you to enter into your closet, and shut your door, 
and on your knees, in the presence of Him whose 
eyes are upon you, sign your name to the following : 

" ' 0, my Saviour, I know that thou hast commanded 
" Go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to 
every creature." I know that there are six hundred 
millions of my fellow men who are perishing in 
heathen darkness ; but thou knowest that my reasons 
for not entering the ministry are such as will, I trust, 
stand the test of thy scrutiny in the day when I meet 
thee at thy bar."'' 

^ " The Redeemer's Last Command/' by Eev. J. Scudder, 
M.D., Missionary to India, pp. 78, 80, 86. 



SUITABLE PASSIVENESS. 189 

Perhaps you are saymg, ^^If I do go abroad, I 
choose to select my own field." Is it then certain 
that you are entirely consecrated ? Is your own will 
surrendered ? Does your design thus to select arise 
from sound reasons for fearing the Church authorities 
are less competent than yourself to make a right 
selection ? Or does it arise from a desire to secure 
an easier and less dangerous field than those which 
may be occupied by your brethren ? Do you say, " I 
may be sent where no others will go" ? Then, may it 
not be to the most needy field, just because of the 
difficulty in supplying it ? And on this very account, 
if you maintain a suitably consecrated spirit, will you 
not go with the more alacrity ? 

" But I may be sent where my life will be short- 
ened." The spirit of entire consecration cares not 
for this, provided there is assurance of carrying out 
the Divine will. The church is bound to publish the 
gospel to all. If missionaries, in some instances, 
should seem to sacrifice their lives, how do we know 
but this would be, to observing heathen, the most 
effectual argument for a final reception of Christianity ? 
Could the sustaining power of true religion be more 
strongly proved in any other way ? The consecrated 
man is ready to leave to the regular authorities of 
the church the determination of the comparative 
value of life at home, in the old routine, where pulpits 



140 gAFE SUBMISSION. 

are so oIo,5e together, and the gospel so frequently 
falls upon inattentive ears. And if your full surren- 
der should result, as is improbable, in shortening your 
days, you may be sweetly resigned, in the confidence 
that Divine Providence has ordered your steps. And 
you will prove the faithfulness of the promise uttered 
by the Saviour, " Whosoever will lose his life for my 
sake, shall find it." 

But you will, perhaps, say, " I may not be learned 
enough;" "Imay be too young;" " I may be too old ;" 
" My physical powers may be insuflScient ;" " My family 
circumstances may be ill adapted;" "Money more 
than men may be needed for missions." These excuses 
are put together, because they can all be met by 
one answer. In entire consecration, you cannot with- 
hold from the church the declaration of your full 
surrender, accompanied, as it may be, by all the facts 
in your case ; because it is evident that your brethren, 
who have the whole work before them, can, better 
than yourself, decide whether it is inexpedient for you 
to go on a mission to the heathen. It will be much 
the safest to submit to the impartial judgment of 
others, after you have given them the facts, than to 
follow your own conclusions. As surely as where 
self-will strongly inclines one to any course of action 
there is danger of overrating capabilities and facilities, 
so surely where self-will opposes there is danger of 



AN OBSTACLE MAY CEASE. 141 

underrating the same. Then let others judge in 
regard to extent of learning, age, physical powers, 
family condition, and pecuniary ability of the church. 

You may add, ^^It will be inconsistent for me to 
go without the consent of one who may be fixed in 
opposition, and who may lay moral claim to my 
attentions at home.'' If you would be safe, for your- 
self, before God, make the declaration of your own 
submission; then any individual in your way may 
feel that he or she is standing between you and the 
Divine will ; and if you lovingly and patiently reason, 
ply motives, and look up for the Spirit's influence, it 
may not be long before the concurrence of the other 
party will be given. You may expect it, unless you 
become indifierent to the removal of the opposition, 
if not secretly glad that an obstacle exists. 

"How shall I offer myself?" According to the 
usage in the church of your choice. If in the Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church, write to a bishop, or to the 
Corresponding Secretary of the Missionary Society. 
The head of any institution of learning, or a presiding 
elder, or a brother in the ministry, or your pastor, 
can facilitate your noble design, and explain the par- 
ticulars concerning yourself which you may not wish 
to state. 

0, trifle not with the demands of the Almighty by 
refusal or evasion ! You may hush the upbraidings 



142 THE CLAIMS MAY BE FORGOTTEN. 

of conscience for this life. Then you may live at 
ease. The claims may be forgotten. You may be 
amused by wealth, or honor; but the subject will 
come up again in a different light hereafter, even the 
light of the fires of the last day. How happy, then, 
will you be to remember that to the beseeching call of 
the church, in view of a perishing world, you answered, 
^^Here am I; send me." Do you so answer? May 
Heaven bless and guide you ! 



A SPECIAL 

PAEENTAL EESPONSIBILITY. 



1. The training of children for missionaries is a 
notable demand of the times. 

A night of ages still broods over heathendom. A 
stream of dark souls still rolls on to eternity. A 
majority of mankind are without the gospel. Can 
they reach heaven without it ? Unless grossly de- 
based moral natures can be changed by the death of 
the body, then that death must introduce the heathen, 
with here and there, it may be, an exception, to an 
eternity of pollution and consequent woe. The 
Saviour '^was moved with compassion,'' in view of 
"multitudes'' who "were scattered abroad as sheep 
having no shepherd," and said, " The harvest truly 
is plenteous, but the laborers are few. Pray ye 
therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send 
forth laborers into his harvest." Who, then, will 
venture to assume that benighted souls are safe with- 
out laborers ? The Holy Ghost moved St. Paul and 
other inspired men to traverse many heathen lands, 

(143) 



144 A REMEDY. ^ 

as well as the one from which came the cry, " Come 
over and help us." Who dare assert, in opposition to 
intimations from the Holy Ghost, as well as from the 
Saviour, that the heathen do not need the gospel to 
secure their salvation ? 

Something must be done ; all agree in this. The 
great failure is not in Divine provisions for the nations, 
but in church instrumentalities. 

Can this great delinquency of the Christian church 
be remedied by appeals to the mature in the laity and 
ministry ? Alas ! too many of these have hearts con- 
nected with defectively trained intellects, which grace 
does not rectify; too many are possessed of rigid 
feelings and prejudices, in relation to the home work 
of the gospel as compared with the foreign ; too many 
shrink from toil in dark places of the earth, as from 
something inglorious for high abilities. We must 
turn our attention to the children for a full cure. 
And the younger the child the more hope, if there be 
deposited in the soft and swelling heart the seeds of 
truth, in regard to the great demand for missionary 
labor, and the glorious reward to follow. 

No parent should decline the effort to superinduce 
correct thinking, and feeling, and action, for fear of 
failure. " Train up a child in the way he should go, 
and when he is old he will not depart from it,'' is the 
grand rule of inspiration. Will God excuse a delin- 



TESTIMONY. 145 

quency which arises from fear of exceptions to such 
a rule ? 

That we must depend upon the rising generation 
for an adequate supply of missionaries, is the conclu- 
sion of pious and penetrating minds. At a ^^ Union 
Missionary Convention/' held May, 1854, in New 
York, in which leading men of different denominations 
prayerfully considered the demand for laborers. Rev. 
Dr. Alexander said : " This important question re- 
spects the awakening of a strong desire in young men 
to take part in the work. How shall the churches 
be awakened ? Evidently by the outpouring of the 
Holy Ghost. But the mere reviving of the spirit of 
piety in the church is not enough. The great duty of 
the church, in relation to the work, is the Christian 
training of children by their parents." He was fol- 
lowed by Rev. Dr. Bangs, who thought Dr. A. had 
touched the very point. Hon. Walter Lowrie made 
a most impressive address on the great wrong of 
parents, who stand in the way of their children going 
to the heathen. And a resolution was adopted, con- 
templating the stamping of " vivid impressions [as to 
training children] on the minds of church members, 
and especially Christian parents. Sabbath School and 
other Christian teachers." 

2. Be moved by a wonderful example of parental 
consecration. 
13 



146 AN AMAZING EXAMPLE. 

It was a consecration much greater than you can 
make — involving anguish for a loved one, far beyond 
what yours can suffer. It was the surrender of an 
only son. It was to provide endless bliss for you and 
your loved ones. " For God so loved the world that 
he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlast- 
ing life." 

While this Son was sweating blood under the dread 
of what was to be " made to meet upon him,'* he 
prayed, ^^ 0, my Father, if it be possible, let this cup 
pass from me !" But he was left a surrendered, as 
well as a surrendering one. And he was not allowed 
his Father's presence, as ''his soul" was made "an 
offering for sin," in a mystery of agony, between 
darkened heavens and a quaking earth. 

Do you say that this Son was to " see of the travail 
of his soul, and be satisfied with the glory that should 
follow" ? So, in the humbler sphere, may it be with 
your child. As a self-denying missionary, following 
the Son of God — though not indeed in vicarious steps 
— your child may be pressed on, and may press on to 
rewarding glory, as great for the servant as was the 
other for the Master. 

Do you say that you, being human, are not qualified 
to imitate the Divine being, in surrendering a child ? 
Bear in mind, that God is ready to '' put His Spirit 



THB RIGHT OP THE OWNER., 147 

in you." (Ezek. xxxvii. 14.) If you decline the 
proffered aid, if you prefer to sit in weakness under 
the dread of the cross, will your weakness excuse 
you ? 

3. Think of the Divine right to your offspring. 

"As I live, saith the Lord God, behold, all souls 
are mine ; as the soul of the father, so also the soul 
of the son is mine.'' What if the owner bereave you 
of the loved one by death ? Even then calm submis- 
sion is enjoined. God may remove what you will not 
surrender, and say, ''Son of man, behold, I take 
away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke : 
yet make no mourning for the dead." 0, consent 
that your Maker shall have your child, alive, upon 
earth, for most honorable and profitable service, in a 
great exigence of the church ! Rev. J. Scudder, M.D., 
late a missionary in India (four of whose sons are now 
laboring there, and two remaining ones preparing to 
go), when seeking the consent of his hesitating mother, 
said to her, "When you consecrated me to God in 
holy baptism, did you ever intend to take me back?" 
The answer was, " Go, my son." 

Though the consecration of your child should be 
immediate and persevering, he can remain with you 
till his powers are sufficiently matured for service, 
and till the call from Providence and the church of 
God is evident. And, after the parting, it is not 



148 ENCOURAGEMENTS. 

improbable that you may meet the loved one agaiD 
upon earth. Indeed, you may spend your last days on 
earth with him at some glowing point, where converted 
heathen may rejoice around you both, with prayers 
for blessings upon your heads. At any rate, you will 
do the most to secure a meeting with him before the 
throne of God, where, with the fruits of missionary 
labor, you may both realize " a far more exceeding 
and eternal weight of glory,'* worked for you, by the 
comparative "moment" of "affliction,'' in the earthly 
separation. 

4. There is peculiar encouragement to the parental 
surrender in the very magnitude of the cross to be 
home. 

It is probably the greatest cross your mind can 
contemplate ; and for this very reason its endurance 
would likely be a kind of guarantee for your spiritual 
safety. For, if you endure the heaviest cross, you 
can the lighter ones. And if all crosses be borne, 
your soul, through grace, will not fail of heaven. 

5. The spiritual safety of your child may he secured. 

Having resolved to train him to fitness for mis- 
sionary service, you will feel fully committed to labor 
for his conversion, as the first great preparation for 
his work. And if he be nurtured up to missionary 
efibrts, it will not be without such exercises of his 
mind and heart, upon the preciousness of immortal 



EXCUSES. 149 

souls, as will involve strong consideration for his 
own. 

If you think it possible, after he is matured for the 
noble work, that the Lord will have most need of him 
in the church at home, you cannot fear he will be 
disqualified. And if you think it possible that the 
church of the next generation will need, at times, 
money more than men for missions, you cannot fear 
that one trained to give himself ^ would withhold his 
earnings. 

6. What are the excuses of any hesitating parents ? 

(1.) " God only can call to preach." This proves 
nothing against training sons to fitness for such a 
call, nor against training sons and daughters to co- 
operate with preachers in missionary stations. The 
great work cannot progress to advantage unless 
preachers are furnished with helpers. 

(2.) ^^I am too poor to educate a child for mis- 
sions." This cannot excuse you from doing your 
utmost to direct your child up to the point, where a 
completing education may be providentially possible. 
In the poorest family, there is ability to impress on 
the young heart a growing sense of the condition of 
the heathen, and of personal responsibility. If, with 
such steady efibrt, your pecuniary resources in the 
future, or some charitable facility for education, or 
your child's own efibrts, should not concur for all 
13* 



150 WANTS CONTRASTED. 

needful preparation, you will have done what you 
could, and will receive the Divine approbation. But 
you will doubtless find that mart's extremity is God's 
opportunity y and that his providence has in store some 
provision for accomplishing what may now seem 
improbable. 

(3.) " My future temporal wants may demand my 
child's attentions at home." It is not, indeed, as cer- 
tain that you will have much future upon earth, as it 
is that the heathen are now in misery, and on their 
way to a fearful and eternal future. But should you 
attain old age, could you, in this land of temporal 
and spiritual blessings, have wants like those of the 
benighted ones, who make journeys by rolling on the 
bare ground three miles a day, or who throw them- 
selves from a high wall, or second story of a house, 
upon iron spikes, or roll themselves among bundles of 
torturing thorns, or dance over a blazing fire, or bind 
themselves to a moving wheel, or stretch themselves 
on the earth during hot days and cold nights, till seed 
germinates in soil fixed upon their lips, and who, after 
all, die unprepared for heaven ? 

0, let your child go to tell such victims, or others 
equally blind and miserable, of the true source of 
merit. Let them hear of Jesus. And, in regard to 
your temporal wants, your child, in the service of the 
church, may be more sure to aid you in time of need, 



DIRECTIONS. 151 

than if left to the uncertainty of secular schemes at 
home, without the favor, if not with the frown, of 
God. 

(4.) "I may be discouraged by the diflBculty of 
inclining my child's own heart to the task.'' If you 
begin before the tender mind is preoccupied, and de- 
pict missionary service with its true glories, you will 
find no discouraging work. What opposite views and 
designs are entertained by different men and women, 
according as their minds and hearts were influenced 
in childhood ! In case of delay, until the child's heart 
is fixed upon the schemes and excitements of his 
native land, the task is more diflScult ; but even then, 
God may not release the parent from steady counsels 
and prayers, until no more can be done ; and the seed 
sown may spring up in the after life of the child. 
When the faithful parent shall have departed to the 
rewards of heaven, the son or daughter may act out 
the tendencies superinduced by early instruction, and 
join the most valiant and important band upon 6arth. 

7. In conclusion, will you allow a few suggestions 
as to the training process ? 

(1.) First of all, have faith in the influence of the 
Holy Q-host. While this is the great secret of effect- 
iveness in your efforts, it is, being hidden from the 
senses, the most easily slighted. 

(2.) Let the training means {especially on the part 



162 EARLY CAPACITY, 

of the mother) begin at as early an age as possible. 
Here let one speak whose service, and whose success- 
ful training of his own children, give weight to direc- 
tions. 

" This training must be commenced, in many cases, 
(cases of early mental development), before the child 
is two years of age. This may be a novel doctrine to 
you, but though novel, it is not the less true. ' Let 
us but consider,' says Dr. Skinner, ' the amount of 
knowledge which a child of common capacity acquires 
before the completion of its third year. The mind of 
that child has already advanced to a vast size com- 
pared with what it was at the beginning. It has 
already become a great treasury of knowledge. How 
many persons, places, things, does he know ! What 
a store of ideas has he in his understanding ! How 
many comparisons has he formed among them ! How 
many logical conclusions has he drawn ! He has ac- 
quired the free, and easy, and delightful use of, per- 
haps, more than one language, and can call a great 
multitude of names, and has an admirable skill in 
constructing sentences and making discourse. Shall 
the intelligence which has compassed all this in less 
than three yearSy be considered too small to demand 
much industry and pains in securing, if possible, its 
just exercise and discipline? Yet such, it would 
ieem, is the view generally taken of it, even by Chris- 



AN INFIDEL'S REMARK. 153 

tian parents. Have you little sons or daughters who 
are delighted in spending hour after hour in turning 
over the leaves of a picture-book, that their opening 
minds may be diverted by the newness of the objects 
which they anticipate seeing ? If so, take up the pic- 
ture of a heathen mother throwing her child into the 
mouth of a crocodile, and explain it to them. Tell 
them why it is that Christian mothers act differently. 
Then tell them of the various means to be made use 
of to prevent such scenes : appeal to their sympathies, 
and ask them if they would not rather send their cents 
to prevent such cruelties, than spend them for toys 
or similar things. Ask them if they would not like 
to go and tell those mothers that they must not do 
such wicked acts. And do you suppose that such dis- 
cipline will make no impression ? It will make a 
strong impression; and if care be taken to deepen 
this impression, by the time your children are four or 
five years old, these principles will be so firmly imbed- 
ded in their minds, that nothing, in after life, will be 
able thoroughly to root them out, 0, there is much truth 
in what a celebrated French infidel philosopher said, 
when he exclaimed, ' Give me the first five years of a 
child's life, and I will teach it to break every law of God 
and man.' The church needs pious mothers, devotedly 
pious mothers, who, when they gaze upon their little 
infants, shall be heard to exclaim, ' If God will only 



154 PRAYER, PAINS, AND PERSEVERANCE. 

spare these children, we will, with the aid of the Holy 
Spirit, make such impressions upon their minds, by 
the time they are five years old, that they shall be 
constrained to obey every law of God and of man — im- 
pressions which shall constrain them to live and labor 
for a perishing world.' '' — The Redeemer s Last Com- 
mand, hy Bev. J. Scudder, M. i)., pp. 14-16. 

(3.) Teach the child to pray with reference to mis- 
sionary service. The author of these lines, under the 
convictions of what he is urging on others, has knelt 
in missionary prayers with his own little daughter, 
whom many would suppose quite too young for mis- 
sionary zeal. But her tears and sobs, from the depths 
of the heart, and her earnest declarations for future 
missionary action, have followed the prayerful view 
of the state of the poor heathen. And she has be- 
come habituated, at her stated seasons of prayer, to 
the offering of distinct petitions for her future useful- 
ness in some foreign field. 

(4.) Fix definite and deep ideas in the child's mind. 
Appeals and instructions may be so complex, or so 
general and diffusive, as to leave the little mind over- 
burdened or uninstructed. And the right impressions 
may, from lack of skilful aim and patient repetition, 
fail of depth and permanency. 

(5.) Finally, let stated efforts be perseveringly con- 



A FUTURE REVIEW. 155 

tiniced. Be not discouraged if success seem a while 
doubtful. Would you desert a prized young tree, 
because, upon loosening the stays, it was found too 
weak to support itself? How should it be with the 
young immortal soul over which God appoints you a 
guide ? 

You are left, before God, with this topic flashing 
upon your mind. His eye is upon you. The path 
of duty is before you. The subject will be reviewed 
in the judgment. As you ask the question. Shall my 
child be a missionary ? God help you to give an an- 
swer that you will there be gratified to remember. 



THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. 



The Saviour's bodily sufferings were not only such 
as any of us might endure, under the pressure of labor 
and torture, but were doubtless heightened, beyond 
the possibility of our experience, by the necessary 
sympathy of his body with an unfallen soul. With a 
sensibility unknown to us, he journeyed, groaned, and 
wept amid the world's moral wastes. 

But turn from the effect on his body to the mental 
suffering. This, though so far less than the final 
agonies of atonement, may have too much escaped 
our consideration. Even in the far less exquisite 
pains of the body, arising from a change of climate, 
how much more sensitive is the frame of a stranger 
than the bodies of those who are dwelling in their 
accustomed latitude ! In our fallen humanity per- 
ceptions are blunted ; and, though we are linked to 
men by consanguinity and sympathy, our sympathies 
are much restricted to temporal interests. How far, 
then, beyond our appreciation, must have been the 
exquisite anguish of the soul of Jesus, on the way to 
a final self-offering, through the domestic and social 

(166) 



THE GBEAT OFFERING. 157 

avenues of our race, and bound to kindred, and the 
whole race, by ties of consanguinity and purest 
brotherly love, and that love sympathizing with a 
survey fully extending to eternal destinies ! 

But we must look at further suffering. Behold his 
anguish in the garden. Think jiot merely of his 
trembling flesh. No sharpened instrument, as yet, 
pierces that. His soul is in the agony which forces 
blood in place of sweat. And all this is in dread 
only of something yet to come. The shadow only of 
it strikes him thus heavily. Look a little further, 
and see him as this mysterious something comes, or 
rather as he goes to it — not merely as his body bears, 
or is borne upon, a cross of wood. By a power, not 
in the feet nailed to the cross — unseen by a faithless 
crowd — he treads "the wine-press alone." Does his 
body thirst ? Let not your sympathies stay on that. 
Look further. But you cannot look far enough. 
Angels cannot. "His souV is made "an offering 
for sin*'' His soul thirsts, and thirsts in vain; yea, 
for the living God. An unearthly cry rings through 
the universe: "My God, my God, why hast thou 
forsaken me V^ A vail is rent in the militant church, 
but another vail, pierced in time only by Omniscient 
Justice and Mercy, covers a mystery of wonderful 
suffering which may be removed in the glorified 

church. 

14 



158 GRATITUDE AND SELF-INTEREST. 

In view of a gift so unspeakable as the atonementy 
can we hesitate to make all possible surrenders to 
God ? especially when the surrenders are needful to 
prepare us for the full benefits of the great sacrifice 
through faith ? Let a sense of gratitude and of self- 
interest combine tcT moye us. 



DELIVERANCE FROM A HOMIBLE PIT, 



A STRANGE and fatal accident is in the mind of the 
writer. The narrow mouth of a mountain pit had 
become so covered by snow as to be unobserved. A 
hunter, who had left home in the morning, returned 
not at night. The anxious wife and little ones kept 
the blazing fire and spread board in readiness, from 
hour to hour. But morning came without the hunter's 
return. Weeks and months passed, and hope had 
died in the mourning hearts, when the horrible truth 
came as a gun, and a skeleton, in mouldy garments, 
were discovered in the mountain pit. 

Suppose that man, as was probable from the nature 
of the pit, not to have been killed by his fall, but 
soon left in darkness, as the opening above was 
speedily refilled by the driving snow. Suppose him 
groping in vain attempts to ascend, and at length 
finding himself helplessly sinking in miry clay — soon 
to be buried alive. At such a juncture, if a great 
cord had been let down with an invitation to grasp it, 
and be surely delivered, would he have hesitated ? 

The sinning one is in " a horrible pit of miry clay.'* 

(159) 



160 A GREAT CORD. 

As he attempts to descry an open heaven for himself 
beyond this life, all is dark. He is without light 
from the "Sun of Righteousness." And he must 
depend for deliverance upon something let down to 
him. He cannot succeed in attempts to " climb up 
some other way.'' And he finds himself sinking, 
being buried alive, in something worse than literal 
clay — sin. The " second death" awaits him. He is 
steadily descending. There is no remaining stationary 
in sin. The sensualist sinks lower and lower. The 
covetous man is becoming more and more earthly. 
The proud man's cravings steadily increase. 

The soul is to he buried alive in sin. Horrible 
thought ! The body's being buried in fire cannot be 
more terrible. The everlasting disappointment of 
desires, the eternal raging of ungratified passions, 
will be as intolerable as torment from flame. 

Is there a mode of escape from this horrible pit ? 
There is. A great cord is let down. It combines 
two strong strands. One is presented to the mind 
and heart by what Christ has interposed in sufi*ering; 
the other by what he has interposed by merit. But 
there is an intertwining of these strands. 

Does any reader say, " I fear the cord is not for 
me" ? It is for you, if you are of mankind. If you 
were of the nature of angels, which the Saviour did 
not take upon him, then to you the word of salvation 



THE soul's trial. 161 

would not be sent. But if you are descended from 
the "first Adam," the '^ last Adam'' appears for you. 

"But I fear I am an exception." You need not. 
Did not Christ "taste death for every man?" The 
provision is sure, though there is a condition, and you 
may be lost after all. 

The condition we are now tracing. 

" Alas ! I fear I am too low in the pit ; I fear that 
my day of grace is gone." Not if your hands are 
yet out of the clay. What does this mean ? It means 
if you are yet where you can exercise a Scriptural 
faith — a confidence in the word of God — in " things 
not seen." 

Faith, before you are obliged to assent ly irresisti- 
ble evidence^ is essential to trial — probation. If your 
soul were leaving the body, and the pains of hell were 
taking hold of it, and surrounding fiends were assur- 
ing you that you had rejected the Saviour, then your 
believing and trembling would be wholly involuntary 
and useless. Your trial — that which will decide your 
eternal destiny — must be previous to such a coercion. 
Your hands are now free. You may grasp by faith 
the great cord of the atonement. How long this may 
be the case is another question. Then lose no time. 

"But may I not deceive myself?" Yes, if you 
choose to hold the cord so loosely as to allow its slip- 
ping away without raising you. 
14* 



162 HOW TO AVOID HEART-SINKING. 

" How shall I know whether it is thus passing 
through my hands — whether I am failing of right 
faith in the atonement ?" Simply by observing whe- 
ther you are coming up out of the clay — whether you 
find yourself in spirit, as well as in outward acts, leav- 
ing all the various modifications of the corruption of 
this low world. 

Some persons get so high as to have only a slight 
foothold upon the clay, and then relinquish the tight 
grasp, as Satan suggests that, if the cord raises them 
further, they will swing in desolateness of spirit, with 
no earthly support, while yet there is no cheer from 
the light of God's countena^nce. 

And what if there is no immediate light upon leav- 
ing the clay ? The cord is raising you, while the light 
of heaven at the mouth of the pit is not yet reached. 

" But God has so much against me ! I have been 
such a sinner ! my heart is sinking !" Beware ! you 
are letting go the cord. Let your heart revive — 
since you have consented to leave the clay — as you 
reflect that " The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity 
of us air' (Isaiah liii. 6), that " Christ hath redeemed 
us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for 
us" (Gal. iii. 13), and that your release from the doom 
of hell may be sure in consideration of what he 
endured. 



DESPISE NOT A RAY OF LIGHT. 163 

When the Saviour was in the agonies of the atone- 
ment, how would it have appeared if a man, under the 
sense of Divine displeasure for his sins, had attempt- 
ed to climb the cross to add some sufferings of his 
own to the great offering ? Such a one would have 
had need to be told that of the people there could be 
none with Jesus, that he would tread " the wine-press 
alone.'' 

Beware how you attempt in your mind to mingle 
your own sufferings — your tears, groans, or heart-aches, 
— with the atoning agonies of the Lamb of God ! Then 
hold fast the cord which is lowered from heaven. Are 
you so doing ? Then you are ascending. It will soon 
be light. If you catch (as is probable) but a faint 
ray at first, it comes from a mid-heaven sun. Despise 
it not — fall not back as have some, and sunk after all 
in the clay, doubting whether they ever had any light. 
Oh, had they praised God for the one ray, and held to 
the cord a little longer, they would have been brought 
fully " out of darkness into his marvellous light.'' 
Continue then your hold. Be encouraged by a little 
light, and there will be an increase. 

" But somehow I feel no confidence that God will 
manifest himself to such a one as me, and dwell in 
my unworthy heart; I have no face to ask so much.'' 
Beware I This kind of reflection is a loosening of 



164 FULL ESCAPE. 

the grasp. Does not the cord imply that you are 
to " ask in his name V A check draws money from 
the bank by the signature — not the hand presenting it. 
Then hold fast. You have passed the main points of 
danger. Now look up. Christ is all your plea. Look 
again. There ! that was a ray ! there is another ! 
there is a stream of light! there is a flood! You are 
out ! glory to God ! You can say : — 

" The opening heavens around me shine 
With beams of sacred bliss, 
If Jesus shows his mercy mine, 
And whispers I am his.^' 

" He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out 
of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and 
established my goings. And he hath put a new song 
in my mouth, even praise unto our God : many shall 
see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord." Amen. 



A BRIEF COMPARISON. 



Is Christian perfection (we mean neither angelic 
nor Adamic perfection) attained at conversion ? In 
a sense it is, and in a sense it is not. The candid 
reader will allow a comparison, without forcing it 
into unjustly minute applications. 

All the parts of a rose may exist while yet the 
soft and tinted leaves are not fully unfolded to the 
breeze and sunshine. They may very soon burst 
forth. The rose, in this state, may be called, in a 
sense, a perfect rose, though it is cramped with a 
partial covering. But, as you look, it swells, more 
or less rapidly ; finally, it opens fully, withholding 
none of its beauties and odor. It is now a perfect 
rose, in another and higher sense. 

What if the rose, in the first stage of perfection, 
were closely papered and twined, and labelled a per- 
fect rose ? It would surely thus be made to fail of a 

second state of perfection. 

(165) 



PEIVATE PRAYER. 



What -would the reader do to be sure of finally 
entering heaven? Rather, what would he not do? 
How cheerfully could he consent to physical and 
mental labor three hours daily for life ! Mankind 
generally strain their powers thrice that time daily, 
with no higher aim than the supply of their current 
wants, and some surplus for an earthly future. Shall 
the joys of endless ages receive no hearty attention ? 
A habit of secret prayer will not take three hours 
daily. An advising and judicious Christian is in 
advance of the writer in the opinion that, through 
grace, no soul will lose heaven who prays in secret, 
fully from the heart, statedly as practicable, thrice 
daily. In this sentiment it is thought the reader will 
concur, after estimating the advantages now to be 
suggested. 

1. Secret prayer is a guard against hypocrisy. 

The soul addicted to regular importunities alone 
before God, being shut up from observance of fellows, 
is necessarily disciplined to act to be seen of him. 

(166) 



GUARDS. 167 

There is a freedom from any insidious working of a 
motive to keep up appearances — to maintain con- 
sistency as a professor of religion before men. Public 
prayer and social prayer are duties, but they are not 
a direct guard against hypociisy, as the Saviour im- 
plied this to be in Matt. vi. 6, 6. 

2. It peculiarly exercises and strengthens faith. 
Alone, before God, without the aids to the senses 

which accompany other exercises, the suppliant soul 
is left to a naked faith — to efforts, which can speedily 
become successful efforts, to apprehend purely the 
invisible Divine presence. Thus arises a new, or an 
invigorated ability to realize what is "not seen,'' and 
the general range of the objects of faith can become 
vivid to the soul. • 

3. It prevents undue dependen<ie on the prayers of 
others. 

Doubtless some hearts are exposed to this evil. 
But a presumptuous waiting for answers to the sup- 
plications of fellows [cannot exist with the habit of 
frequent struggles for one's self. 

4. The whole mind is more easily brought to hear 
upon spiritual objects. 

When a person is entirely alone, his thoughts are 
most secure from impertinent subjects. This is the 
case in meditations upon temporal affairs. What man 
would not choose the aid of solitude, if some great 



168 A HELP AND A HABIT. 

worldly results depended on exactness of reflections 
and of emotions ? Shall solitude be denied to ejBForts 
for heaven ? 

5. It facilitates suitable temporal pursuits. 

The fear that regular and full secret prayers will 
so take time as to conflict with these pursuits is just 
what deters many from the duty. But in reality 
(unless temporal success would become a curse, the 
very withholding of which would be an answer to 
prayer) the most direct way to what the world calls 
good luck is to take time daily to commune with 
God, and to be "set in the way of his steps." The 
business man may thus be put under drawings to 
conjunctures for success, which no human sagacity 
could design. Would a man traversing a mazy 
wilderness, by a narrow pass in the darkness of the 
night, be really losing time in needful pauses to re- 
plenish a lamp ? Let no business man think there is 
loss of time in audiences with the Father of lights. 

6. The force of habit becomes a guard to the soul. 
Persistence in frequent repetition, even without 

regularity of intervals, can transform a nauseous and 
acrid weed to a sweet morsel under the tongue — can 
even enchain both body and soul to deadly potations, 
while the victim stares disheartened at the maelstrom- 
centre to which he is tending. And is there in habit 
no mighty power for good as well as evil ? Verily, 



TWO KINDS OF FIRE. 169 

there is. In what can it be more important to bring 
this force to bear, than in communion with God ? In 
secret prayers, with no repelling from what is a while 
disgusting, or what must steadily remain hideous in 
prospect, and with the facility to cumulative force 
from regularity, a frame of heart may indeed be 
attained as remarkable for resistance to bad influ- 
ences, as is that of the confirmed drunkards to good. 

7. It furnishes desirable interruptions to a worldly 
frame of mind, 

"What !'' exclaims the bustling professor of religion, 
" drop all, step right out of my sphere of hurried 
effort, and take time for my mind to cool down, and 
comprehend a blessing from above ? This will be too 
much at times for an active business man.'' In this 
very violence to the worldly feelings — this very shock 
to the earthly drift of affections — is a special safe- 
guard to the soul. The insidious reluctance to ex- 
change the strange fire of business excitement for that 
fire which the Holy Ghost imparts in the closet, 
proves the danger of absence from the closet. 

8. Apostasy can hardly result without times for its 
ineipiencies longer than those which occur between the 
stated prayers. 

It is not to be expected that a Christian will leave 
God by a single step. The fatal process involves at 
first, under the cunning of Satan, a protraction of 
15 



170 WATCHFULNESS SECURED. 

slight and unalarming wanderings of affections and of 
trijBings with conscience, "little bj little;'' "little 
foxes." These incipiencies cannot remain hid in 
regularly recurring and whole-hearted devotions. 
The hideous crocodile cannot start into life from the 
ichneumon's frequented path. Secret prayer meets 
apostasy in the germ. In full importunities in the 
closet, rebuking light from Omniscience will show the 
most minute deviations of heart, lips, or life. The 
bitterness of regrets for these, and right resolutions 
for future watchfulness, must precede the obtaining 
of a full blessing. The soul rises from prayer with a 
zeal to be on guard against occasions for such an 
unpleasant struggle the next time. And either sin- 
ning will draw to the omission of praying, under 
dread of penitent bitterness in wait, or praying will 
draw to effective watchfulness against sinning to 
avoid such bitterness. 

In view of the guards adverted to, the conclusion 
is that, if the reader or writer should finally be lost, 
whatever else he may recollect in eternal woe, he 
may expect the fact will ever follow him, that if he 
had Heartily prayed in secret thrice daily for life, he 
would, through the merits of Christ, have attainted 
heaven. 



A HINT TO OPEN DOUBTERS 

OP 

ENDLESS MISEM. 



Suppose a case. A young TJniversalist commences 
mercantile business. He believes hell is in this life, 
immediately following sin. He cheats a customer to 
the extent of fifty cents. As he reflects, he has some 
unpleasant sense of having done wrong. This he calls 
hell. But, terrible as are the Scriptural allusions to 
hell, that which the TJniversalist so calls can be ven- 
tured into again for fifty cents. At length the cheat- 
ing becomes a habit. And none can doubt but that 
there may be attained a readiness for the dishonest 
gain of many dollars at a time, and that too with 
diminished remorse. Indeed, the laws of human 
nature are such that persevering roguery must finally 
enable the perpetrator to reply to the inquiry whether 
he yet feels a hell for sin : " 0, no ; I sinned myself 
fully out three months ago. By persistence in iniquity 
I have overcome the liability to what I understand to 

be hell." 

(171) 



172 A QUESTION. 

Can we believe that the punishment appointed by 
undeviating Rectitude is in inverse ratio with the 
increase of sinning, and becomes a cumulative encou- 
ragement to crime ? If any reader's common sense 
will not answer now, it will when before the great 
white throne. 

(See the next article.) 



HINTS TO SECRET DOUBTERS 



ENDLESS MISERY. 



If scepticism, out of the church, is subtile and 
insidious, so far as it is in the church it is not likely 
to be coarse and open. But when there is a withered 
zeal under the profession of belief in a most tremen- 
dous and heart-stirring motive, there may be at the 
root a species of the worm of infidelity. It may be 
hidden to careless self-examinations. But its gnaw- 
ings can prepare the tree for the fire. The healthful 
in faith will have patience while space be taken for 
the endangered. 

The soul is sleepless and ceaseless. 

It is strange, when the qualities of matter and spi- 
rit are so evidently dissimilar, that any minds are so 
perverted as to question the distinct existence of the 
latter, and be contented in a terrible waiting for death 
to convince them of the existence of intelligen<;e 
apart from matter. It will soon be known that, 
15* (ITS) 



f 
174 << destruction" not annihilation. 

instead of even sleeping till the resurrection, the 
spirit can be all eye, all ear, all intelligence, "without 
clay, as surely as, on a much broader scale, can an 
angel, and the Divine Being himself! 

And there will never be an escape from conscious- 
ness by annihilation. Ruined angelic spirits, as well 
as those of incorrigible men, will, according to Scrip- 
ture, be "tormented day and night, for ever and 
ever.'* Of course there must be conscious being 
while "tormented." The Devil can be "destroyed" 
in no further sense than being put in this state — his 
final one, according to inspiration. (Rev. xx. 10.) 
The scriptural sense of the term " destroyed," there- 
fore, in regard to him, or man, does not mean annihi- 
lation. The notion of a literal destruction of the 
soul, to which some have wrested the Scriptures in 
search for annihilation, really implies only a dissolu- 
tion. The intelligent sceptic must readily allow that 
the term destroyed, when literally applied, as to a 
material object, can only indicate a division or disso- 
lution into parts. Could such destruction be possible 
of mind, it would not annihilate its attributes more 
than it does those of matter. And attributes are all 
that we can deal with in matter. The essence itself 
is out of our reach. Now, as any essential attribute 
of matter would remain in every part inio which it 
could be resolved, would not consciousness^ an essential 



A WIDE KANGE. 175 

attribute of mind, (certainly with fallen angels, and 
why not with man in eternity ?) remain in every part 
into which any mind might be resolved ? Surely no 
devil or man would have consciousness annihilated by 
being thus separated into a multitude of conscious- 
nesses — an absurdity, in the Divine procedure, not to 
be feared by Satan himself. 

WHY IS THE SOUL PERMITTED TO BE LOST ? 

In view of the spirit's ceaseless existence and inva- 
luable nature, some may wonder why it is permitted 
to be lost — why it is Divinely permitted that tempta- 
tion may operate with the possibility of man's fatally 
yielding ? With our limited powers, how can we ex- 
pect to comprehend the range of the Divine govern- 
ment ? Even in an earthly one, the wisest regulations 
may appear strange to views merely local, and con- 
fined to immediate results. The eye of Omniscience 
has taken in the universe, and eternity to come. We 
should expect that the range of Divine administra- 
tions in regard to law, and penalty, and permission 
of evil — including the eternal damnation of devils 
and incorrigible men — when, necessarily to our frail 
minds, announced without the broad reasons in the 
Infinite Mind — would, at first, appear strange. In 
the revelations of science, how many truths have been 
announced, necessarily without their proofs, to un- 



1T6 MISDIRECTION OF REASON. 

learned minds — which have been at first esteemed by 
such minds as strange, if not absurd? Then, in a 
revelation from G.od, upon abstruse things, in a far 
more subtile kingdom than that of matter, is it not 
reasonable to suppose that some things would appear 
strange, and, to careless thinkers, even unreasonable ? 
Therefore, let it be remembered by any one who doubts 
his liability to so great a penalty as " eternal damna- 
tion," that he will find no excuse in the misdirection 
of his reason, to doubting, or wondering at, the truths 
of revelation, instead of searching for evidence of 
the authenticity of that revelation, and of praying for 
light from his Maker. An incredulous or brazen 
staring at the truths is far from being the course to 
escape their final edge. There is no help for us but 
to assent to the Scriptures, upon the anterior evi- 
dences of their inspiration — as from miracles and 
prophecy — anterior evidences the certainty and signi- 
ficance of which convince all who do not allow their 
love of sin to blind them. 

We shall doubtless, in eternity, receive abundance 
of reasons for many things strange to us here. -5\^e 
may find that Divine wisdom, in permitting beings to 
choose their way to hell, after ample provision and 
warning for their escape, permitted a less evil for a 
much greater good in the glorification of a class of 
beings from a state of trial ; in the nature of things 



SECURITY OF THE GREATEST GOOD. 177 

capacitated (as the lost might have been) by that trial 
for '^a far more exceeding and eternal weight of 
glory;" and a good, not merely in the case of those 
saved from our globe, but a much further extended 
good, in the evolving of principles and precedents in 
the Infinite economy, favorably to modify moral cha- 
racter, in myriads of systems to arise far on in eter- 
nity. Thus, to the Divine contemplations, far more 
good may have been seen finally to result from grant- 
ing moral agency, and permitting the wilful to choose 
hell, than there could from creating man without 
freedom or probation. 

This earthy small as it is compared with the uni- 
verse, may be the stage for evolving the moral prin- 
ciples and lessons referred to. Let it be considered 
that the second person in the Godhead specially 
descended to this earth, and formed an eternal union 
with the nature of the rational beings upon it. It is 
a stage upon which the Almighty called for a " sword'' 
to " awake" " against" his " fellow." (Zech. xiii. 7.) 
Wide as the universe is, or is to be, but one such stage 
may appear in the vast range of Divine administra- 
tion. But if perfect mystery should to us surround 
the most terrible truth in that Divine revelation which 
rests impregnably upon anterior authentications, our 
very reason directs us to acquiesce in faith. 



THE FIRST STING OF THE UNDYING WORM. 

(a record made near twenty years ago.) 



Some months since, on my bed, a sense of apparent 
realities was produced upon my mind, about as fol- 
lows : — 

It seemed that my soul had waked to conscious- 
ness in eternity. I could look back on my past life 
as for ever closed. I began to recollect certain 
neglects of cross-bearing, and certain sins of commis- 
sion which I had presumed were small enough to be 
safely indulged in by a professor of religion. 

But now they swelled into mountains, under the 
glances of the eye of Jesus Christ. I saw plainly 
that I had carelessly ventured on in what had been 
forbidden by the Holy Spirit, and that the absence of 
a sense of danger had resulted from not calmly paus- 
ing to listen to the secret whisperings of that Spirit. 
And now I could not feel that it was possible for the 
Lord Jesus to say to me, "Well done, good and 
faithful servant." On the contrary, as I thought on 

my past life, with its evidences of imperfect faith, I 

(178) 



REMORSE. 179 

could not but feel self-condemned ; and presently my 
agonized soul began to hear the language of Jesus 
himself, uttered directly to me, in substance :— 

" You have not done your duty. Look at your 
misspent life. You have been an unfaithful servant. 
You did not serve me earnestly enough. You sought 
your carnal ease by slighting your closet prayers. 
You refused to deny yourself mere trifles which I 
asked you to surrender ; and then, because they were 
mere trifles, you hoped to escape condemnation." 
My conscience seemed to act as the servant of Jesus, 
in repeating the intensely tormenting truths. 1 felt 
the first sting of the undying worm. My whole soul, 
in remorse and strange horror, commenced to plead 
for a return to the world for another probation. 
" !" I exclaimed in intense anguish, " if I were only 
back in that world of privilege, I would be in earnest 
— I would deny myself — I would do anything, make 
any efi*ort to serve Thee. Let me go — let me go." 
But I could realize no hope of such a privilege. It 
seemed to me that my soul must settle down in 
despair, under the overwhelming fact that it was for 
ever too late to make or keep resolutions to serve 
Christ. how my conscience spoke ! the re 
morse ! the despair ! the horror ! God only knows 
what I felt. 

Dear reader, if you should die to-night, with what 



180 A SAFE WAT. 

consciousness would you wake in eternity ? Will you 
not resolve with the writer to live just as you must 
suppose your spirit would promise to do, were it out 
of the body, unprepared, and could be allowed to 
return ? But God will allow no return. If you go 
before Him, unprepared, will you not find attempts 
vain to offer a plea for a returUj as you recollect you 
might have known on earth, by due pause and antici- 
pation, what promises you would be ready to make ? 
May He not try you from this moment to see if 
you will live up to such promises ? The safe way is 
to live as if you ivere sent hack. Then^ in eternity^ 
you ivill have no cause to wish for a return. 



INiaUITY m THE HEAIIT. 



Look forward a little. Picture to yourself some- 
thing of the last judgment. Let your imagination 
dwell upon what it cannot overpaint. See the Judge 
of all the earth upon his great white throne. ^' The 
Master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the 
door.'* A certain class of professors of religion are 
vainly seeking to enter heaven. (Luke xiii. 24, 27.) 
They stand without, and knock at the door, saying, 
"Lord, Lord, open unto us." The Judge answers, 
" I know you not whence you are.'' On earth 
they had fond hope. Their disappointment now 
comes. No plea avails. "Lord, Lord, have we not 
prophesied in thy name, and in thy name have cast 
out devils, and in thy name have done many wonder- 
ful works ?" " We have eaten and drunk in thy pre- 
sence, and thou hast taught in our streets." But there 
is no hope. The sentence sounds forth, " Depart from 
me^ all ye workers of iniquity.'' The secret of the 
ruin' is in the one word '^ iniquity.'' 

And has not human nature come to the judgment 
deceived from the nineteenth century, a3 surely as 
16 ^ (181) 



182 ANTICIPATION OF TESTS. 

from the first ? Was there not in that century a class 
of presuming Christians, Tvho are also now to have 
the gate of heaven, shut against appealing references 
to by-gone familiarity with the Head of the Church ? 
Ah, yes ; for in the later century human nature re- 
mained the same, and Satanic skill was undiminished ; 
and the self-persuasion entertained upon earth of not 
being in such a class was no proof of safety ; for, alas ! 
a characteristic of deception was not to view one's 
self truly, and even to shrink, perhaps indignantly 
(as may be in reading this article), from suggestions 
of full tests. A secret opposition in lifetime to anti- 
cipation of judgment tests, should have been the 
startling proof of deadly infatuation. The safe soul 
dreaded no searching process, knowing the severest 
could only make more manifest the sure grounds of 
joyful confidence. 

What can be said to any iniquitous one at the judg- 
ment-seat who attempts to plead his past deceived 
state of mind against the claims of justice ? Could 
not the common sense of any impartial one in the 
judgment-crowd, if permitted, say to him, '^ You doubt- 
less might have ascertained your true condition by a 
candid and patient anticipation of the tests of this 
day, by bringing your whole heart to the straight-edge 
.of the Scriptures, as in the sight of their Author and 
your Judge. Had you thus condemned yourself, you 



TEMPTATION WELCOMED. 183 

would not now be condemned. There was a remedy 
for guilt in probation. But you ventured on. What 
you flattered yourself was a manly escape from over- 
scrupulosity, was a postponement of detecting light to 
a remediless eternity." 

that such a one had known his own self while yet 
the cross of atonement was between him and hell! 
Now he must fully see his case, without a cure. Hark ! 
must not his conscience, at least, hear from the throne, 
^' When in the world of trial did your heart entertain 
evil ? What, if you could not avoid temptation more 
than the passing of birds over your head, yet, after 
allowing evil thoughts, not only to find rest upon the 
head, but to remain pressing at the door of the heart, 
did you admit them, and welcome their nestling, flat- 
tering yourself that with no outward deed, you might 
be safe?" Hear the arraigned one reply: "Yea, 
Lord, I remember that I was so far guilty. I did not 
realize my soul endangered while I denied myself the 
outward act." "But did you not refrain from the 
outward act in order to gratify one inward sin which 
was in antagonism to another ? Did not inordinate 
passion, or self-love, in one form, withhold you from 
the outward gratification of the same in another? 
And did not my word attach guilt to covetoiisncss, 
hatred, or lust, though confined to the heart, and dis- 



184 SIN IN THE SOUL. 

tinctly teach that they were idolatry^ murder^ or adul- 
tery^ committed already in the heart?" 

'' Yea, Lord, but I did not anticipate the full appli- 
cation of such a rule in the judgment." '^ But did I 
not teach that the word should judge you in the last 
day ? Heaven and earth can pass away, but not my 
word. Have you not deceived yourself with the lamp 
of life in your hand?" 

'^ Ah, Lord, may there not be excuse for poor weak 
human nature, under the temptations of Satan?" 
" Not if that human nature wilfully neglected obtain- 
able relief — the mighty aids of the Holy Ghost." 
" But, Lord, I never apprehended the necessity of 
damnation for those inward indulgences, if the out- 
ward life continued obedient." ''This was because 
you remained deceived. Will it content you to have 
your body saved?" ''Nay, Lord, not without my soul, 
which is my thinking self, craving endless bliss." 
'' But only your body was free from the secret sinning. 
You did not carry out in the body the motions of 
covetousness to a thievish grasping of another's goods, 
nor the motions of anger to a literal smiting of your 
fellow, nor the motions of lust to the outward abomi- 
nation. But the inward man committed the crime. 
The soul has become the guilty one. If a man on 
earth, while dreaming of using fire lawfully, had 
accomplished the physical deed of igniting a neigh- 



SOUL AND BODY LOST. 185 

Kor's dwelling, and thus taking the lives of its in- 
mates, would you have accounted hiin a murderer?" 
"No, Lord/' "Why?" "Because his mind was 
not in the act.'' "The mind, then, being in an evil 
act, constituted crime ?" " Even so." " Alas ! then, 
out of your own mouth must you be condemned, inas- 
much as your presumptuous hopes of heaven were drawn 
from the freedom of your body only from sin, while 
you must acknowledge your mind was in the crime. 
The pollution of the heart, therefore, must damn your 
soul. Only your body could enter heaven, but not 
that indeed, while it can never have powers and sus- 
ceptibilities separate from the soul. And no lament- 
ations now can prevent your being for ever lost ; for 
since the judgment is set there is not, there never can 
be, in the whole of the Divine resources, any atone- 
ment or saving process for you. He that is filthy, 
let him be filthy still." 
''And he was speechless.'* 



FOOLISH TALKING AND JESTING. 



** Nor foolish talking^ nor jesting, ^^ (Eph. v. 4.) 

" But I say unto you^ That every idle word that men shall 

speaJc, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment J' 

(Matt. xii. 36.) 

Imagination can suddenly transfer us to the judg- 
ment-seat of Christ— -but no more suddenly than will 
be the real summons " in a moment, in the twinkling 
of an eye/' " as the lightning." 

Are we there ? Then hark ! Does there not come 
down from the great throne, among the judicial in- 
quiries, one in regard to that sinful use of the tongue 
which men were most prone to think excusable, and 
which therefore wrought the wider ruin ? 

" Did you indulge in foolish talking or jesting^ not 
merely such social pleasantry as could be in union 
with joy in the Holy Ghost, but words that gratified 
impurity, with a double meaning, or levity with 
trifling, or vanity with wit?" "Yea, Lord, I did at 
times thus venture with my tongue, yet I did not see 

(186) 



A STRANGE FIRE. 187 

how I could thereby expose my soul, while designing 
no harm, but social gratification of others, as well as 
myself.'' ^^But did not my word expressly forbid 
foolish talking and jesting; and ought you not to 
have refrained, even though ignorant of the process 
of their fatal action ? That process you can now 
trace. Recollect, when in sweet communion with God, 
as you entered a certain social circle, if you had been 
asked as to your spiritual state and prospects, you 
could readily have answered that all was well, that 
you were the Lord's — that heaven was in view. But, 
in that company, you felt stirred to utter the pro- 
hibited words. The persons around you were free, 
easy, and witty. Your Christian decorum was appear- 
ing singular. And, though a solemn whispering — 
gentle for adaptation to moral agency — went through 
the cells of your heart, assuring you it would not be 
for the Divine glory, or your real happiness, yet your 
tongue transgressed. You granted sustaining, vent, 
and fuel to a strange fire. A new fire — not from 
God — warmed your soul. As you left the company 
conformed to it, instead of having done what you 
could to elevate it, had you been asked as to your 
spiritual state and prospects, could you have readily 
answered, as when you came, that all was well, that 
you were the Lord's, that heaven was in view ? 

" Did backsliding consist in the falling of the physi- 



188 A QUESTION. 

cal man, as from church-steps, or a precipice, or in 
the falling of the spirit from communion with Him, 
who is a spirit? Could spiritual safety exist with a 
habit of breaking away from God ?" 
" And he was speechless." 



OUTWAUD ADORNING. 



" If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in 
him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the 
hist of the eyes, and the pride of life^ is not of the Father, but 
is of the world/' — St. John. 

"Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of 
plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold.'' — St. Peter. 

"That women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with 
shamefacedness and sobriety ; not with br older ed hair, or gold, 
or pearls, or costly array." — St. Paul. 

" And the dead were judged out of those things xohich were 
written in the looks , accoi^ding to their works J ^ 

Surely by three witnesses, especially sucli as John, 
Peter, and Paul, a truth is sufficiently established to 
be apprehended as a test in the last day. To a faith- 
ful conscience and sober imagination, is there not 
from the judgment-throne the inquiry, "Did you 
indulge in the outward adorning forbidden by inspira- 
tion — not unconsciously, under a perverting early 
training and false glosses of the rules, but knowingly, 
against the manifest drift of the word and the whispers 
of conscience V " I recollect so doing, but I did not 

(189) 



190 SUBTLE SELF-DECEPTION. 

fear condemnation for pride, while aiming to main- 
tain only a level with others — to conform to the 
standard of ray social grade." " Was not your 
chosen standard one of the world, and not the one 
of my word ? Was it safe to follow a fashion which 
was forbidden by inspiration ? Ought you not to have 
suspected some subtle self-deception in fearlessness of 
such transgression ? Were you secure by being in 
the broad way, and among the many ? If you ought 
not to have been singular from the many, because of 
possessing singular light, yet you ought to have 
realized that an aggregation of beings could not 
destroy your individuality and personal responsibility 
— that, as the word taught, every one should give 
account of himself to God. But did not pride hold 
you to the showy badges of your level, lest you be 
mistaken for one of a lower class — ^lower only in an 
arbitrary and worldly sense ? And was it not pride 
which kept you from exposure to the brazen charge, 
from the votaries of fashion, of superstition, hypo- 
critical plainness, or reducing religion to dress ?'* 
''And he \or she] was speechless.'^ 



THE CONDEMNATION OF THE DEVIL. 



Love is heaven. ^ " God is love." (1 John iv. 8.) 
Pride is hell. ^^ Pride" is " the condemnation of the 
devil." (1 Tim. iii. 6.) 

Pride will be seen after the day of judgment to be 
the same element, from its first fountain in Lucifer, 
on beyond its last bubble in a probationer, to its eter- 
nal eddying in the lake of fire. 

The penalty around the sin will be distinct from 

the sin. But the sin must produce dire effects in the 

nature of things, as well as meet the penalty. There 

is an awful philosophy of eternal torment to be traced 

in incorrigible pride. And " behold, the Lord cometh 

with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment 

upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly." Let 

the proud probationer be entreated now to follow 

some thoughts which in the great day may be pressed 

upon his conscience and reason. Will he be as apt 

to deceive himself, if he imagine truths as coming 

from the judgment throne, as he would in adopting a 

less startling process? Listen! ^'What is needful 

to give you — a proud being — heaven, considering 

(191) 



192 Lucifer's sin. 

heaven as a state of contentment and gratification; 
that is, what is needful to satisfy pride ? whether as 
it operated in Lucifer, son of the morning, when he 
purposed to ascend above the heights of the clouds, 
and be like the Most High ; or in Nebuchadnezzar, 
as he boasted of Babylon, and his own might and 
majesty ; or in Herod, welcoming the idolatrous shout ; 
or in weak women with their cauls, and round tires 
like the moon, and chains, and bracelets, and rings ; 
or in any son or daughter of Adam, as modified by 
his or her sphere and circumstances ? Would it con- 
tent pride to receive admiration, followed by ascrip- 
tions of praise and glory to the high Source of every 
good and perfect gift ; an adoring gaze through and 
beyond the creature, resting only upon Him who 
maketh one to difier from another ? Would not pride 
in its very nature demand, as essential to gratification, 
that the admiration and praise remain on self; that 
self take the place of God P the essence of Lucifer's 
sin having entered all proud spirits. Now as heaven 
is the beatific vision and ceaseless and unreserved 
adoration of God, it must follow that, in order to give ^^ 
enjoyment to a proud being before the throne of God, 
there must be a turning aside of some other beings 
from the flow of heavenly bliss, in a prostration of 
their admiring powers to the proud one. Will God 
attempt to give a state of satisfaction to a proud 



A STARTLING NECESSITY. 193 

being, by depriving others of heaven? Even if he 
should would the proud being find happiness ? Must 
not pride, in its very nature, ever aspire above its 
present level ; and if allowed a full race in any being, 
would it not end where it began, in one who contem- 
plated no being above him but the Most High ? 

''Pride does not seek food for a healthy appetite, 
but fuel for a flame. The more there were vouchsafed, 
the higher would be the blaze. And were all proud 
beings to receive the successive elevations which 
Omnipotence might grant, then all proud beings 
would become fallen archangels, and find the depth 
of a fallen archangel's hell. 

" A proud being cannot have heaven. A proud being 
must have hell. It is unavoidably demanded in the 
nature of things, as well as in justice. And since 
probationary privileges, since the pleadings of a 
Mediator, have ended, there is no remedy. Depart, 
ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil 
and his angels." 

''And he was speechless^ 



17 



LOST RELATIVES. 



God permits but few or no instances of a person's 
having positive evidence that a loved relative is 
eternally lost. Many circumstances, unknown or 
insignificant to the cold heart of the public, become 
palliatives to the fears of private afiection. And 
where, by death, a tare has really been sealed to the 
judgment, its roots have been so delicately intertwined 
with those of the living wheat, that a soft, as well as 
strong Hand, will manage the case. But very little 
may be known till the ties of a family, higher than 
any of earth, with a great Father at its head, shall 
be exquisitely substituted for probationary attach- 
ments. 

There have been strong queries — first in the heart, 
and then in the intellect, of some persons, how one 
could be happy in heaven, while a once-loved relative 
is for ever lost. Now, let such querists observe 
that all endearing ties on earth subsist in that natural 
affection which is implanted by the Creator for pur-* 
poses of this life only ; or, subsist in a knowledge or 
supposition of desirable qualities of the loved object. 

(194) 



NO MOURNING IN HEAVEN. 195 

The first source of attachment will, of course, not 
belong to the eternal family in heaven. As to the 
other principle of endearment, let it be supposed that 
the admirer of a rose should eventually find it a dark 
and corrupt mass upon the earth, devoid of symmetry, 
color, and odor. Would he still bend to it in attach- 
ment ? Was he not attracted by the symmetry, 
color, odor — not the abstract substance. Now, a lost 
spirit will be — and, in the light of eternity, will be 
known to be — utterly devoid of any real or supposed 
desirable quality with which it was ever associated to 
the eye of truth, or the fancy of ardent friendship, of 
poetic love, or of parental fondness. The rose is not 
recognized. The symmetry, the color, the odor, are 
gone for ever. 

The two secrets of earthly attachment will fail in 
eternity. In heaven there will he no mourning for a 
lost relative. Let the downward-going relative think 
of this. 



GROWTH IN HEAYEN. 



The vastness of the material universe, in a system 
of systems of nebulae, as further and further disclosed 
to us with the increase of telescopic power, may 
threaten to dishearten the soul with an idea of its 
own insignificance. But let the soul gird up itself in 
humble dignity, and press up to its true inheritance. 
God sustains in the brain and heart of a Newton, 
orbs of thought and emotion (with Himself for a 
centre), more wonderful than the outward creation : 
ethereal powers and capacities, which, before their 
growth in heaven, may go forth with a strange 
elasticity and measure, and comprehend the grosser 
galaxies. 

But the already capacious spirit may grow in 
heaven for ever. What if it find there many saints 
and angels far in advance of it ? The present measure 
of the highest angel must of course he attained hy an 
endless growth^ and, though that angel will ever have 
go-ne forward, he will never have a measure of bliss, 

(196) 



GROWTH AND AMBITION. 197 

which the spirit following will not also attain^ and^ 
in its turn, pass beyond. 

The man who will leave such a field as this, to 
gratify an earthly ambition, may expect to deserve 
and to have eternal damnation. 



17 = 



LOVE m THE TRINITY. 



In the far past of God's existence, when there "was 
no created being, was there a Divine solitude ? Was 
there no flow of reciprocal love — of fellowship and 
communion of persons ? " The Lord possessed me in 
the beginning of his way, before his works of old" 
(Prov. viii. 22), may be said by a Divine personality 
of love, as well as of wisdom. He can add, " Then I 
was by him, as one brought up with him : and I was 
daily his delight, rejoicing always before him." 
(Prov. viii. 30.) It was against this "Fellow" (Zech. 
xiii. 7) that a sword was awakened by the Lord of 
hosts, which would have drunk up the blood of 
Adam's race. This " Fellow," when " manifest in the 
flesh," said, "0 Father, glorify thou me, with thine 
own self, with the glory which I had with thee before 
the world was." "For thou lovedst me before the 
foundation of the world." (John xvii. 5, 24.) In 
mystic and loving oneness with these two is another 
Divine person, " the Spirit," " the Comforter, which 
is the Holy Ghost." (John xiv. 17, 26.) 

(198) 



DISINTERESTED BENEVOLENCE. 199 

And now let it he observed, that creation resulted 
from no dependence of the Trinity upon extraneous 
sources for the bliss of loving, and being loved, but 
from disinterested benevolence. To what is infinite, 
nothing can be added. How ready then should we 
ever be to subject our own Avill to the will of our 
Creator, in the confidence that he desires our best 
good! 



THE EXCELLENCY OF LOVE. 



Intelligent beings are so constituted as not to be 
happy except in a state of being lovedy and of loving. 
All desirable aspects, in all ranges of things, or beings, 
present modifications only of this state, or dependen- 
cies upon it. If a being, neither loved nor loving, 
were enthroned amidst the greatest glories of earth, 
or of the outward glories of heaven itself, might he 
not, at least to himself, mutter, in a deeper sense than 
did one of old, ^'All this availeth me nothing"? 
Would there not be more true happiness without the 
glories supposed, if, at his side, even a brute fawned 
and spoke love as well as it could ? 

And happiness must be heightened according to the 
grade of being in connection with which the loving 
frame exists. It would rise indeed higher than with 
a brute, if with a human being, though that being 
should be incapable of appreciating all our moral 
tastes. It would rise yet higher if with one on the 
same level of sympathy, and perfectly fitted for com- 
munion. How, then, if with an angel — how, if with 
all the heavenly host of created beings ! But how 

(200) 



SOMETHINa UNSPEAKABLE. 201 

much higher J if with the Infinite God himself ! ! 
Here is heaven. And does not God love ? " He that 
planted the ear, that formed the eye, that teacheth 
man knowledge" can '^ hear-^see— know." (Psalm 
xciv. 9, 10.) Then, surely, if He has taught man 
to love, he can also love. How, Christian reader, 
have you felt his love ! How was your '' heart strange- 
ly warmed" ! Is it not so now ? What a mystical 
bliss arises, as your love springs up to meet the Di- 
vine ! You cannot describe it. 

Love is not the prime element of bliss for creatures 
only. Jehovah chooses it for himself. '' God is love." 
(1 John iv. 16.) He rejoices to " shed abroad his love 
in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost given unto us." 
(Rom. V. 5.) '' He will rejoice over thee with joy ; 
he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with sing- 
ing." (Zeph. iii. 17.) His love, in its refinement, 
must be beyond the exact comprehension of our powers 
of short and dull experience in love. It is the same 
towards us, in its exquisite nature, with the outpour- 
ing of Deific warmth between the Persons of the 
Holy Trinity. Here is the proof: "I in them, and 
thou in me." "And hast loved them as thou hast 
loved me." " That the love wherewith thou hast 
loved me may be in them." (John xvii. 23, 26.) 
Wonderful love ! . The creature is filled with grateful, 
adoring amazement. Language fails. The dying 



202 A SIGN. 

Fletcher knew languageSj but, as the blaze of this love 
flashed on his spirit at the gate of heaven, he declared : 
''I have received such a manifestation of the full 
meaning of those words ' God is love,' as I can never 
be able to tell. It fills me every moment. God is 
love ! Shout, shout aloud ! I want a gust of praise 
to go to the ends of the earth!" And he contem- 
plated the change of one vague sign for another as he 
proposed a motion of the finger for that of the tongue : 
"But it seems as if I could not speak much longer. 
Let us fix on a sign ;" (tapping twice with his finger,) 
— "now I mean God is love." 

reader, open your soul as much as possible " to 
comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and 
length, and depth, and height ; and to know the love 
of Christ, which passeth knowledge." (Eph. iii. 18, 19.) 

" This, this is the God we adore, 

Our faithful, unchangeable Friend, 
Whose love is as great as his power, 
And neither knows measure nor end/' 

Here is love, higher indeed than from brute, or man, 
or angel. Is there any higher grade of love than that 
of the Being above all others in infinite excess ? 



SUFFERING m LOVE. 



The business of life is to obtain and retain religion. 
Retaining it would seem the more diflBcultj judging 
from the greater prevalence of professions of having 
got itj than of professions of having kept it. The 
secret of the retention, as well as of the obtainment, 
is the crossing of ones own will. The eflBcacy of the 
atonement and the eflSciency of the Spirit must indeed 
be kept in view. But their continuance, as well as 
their commencement, is sure to the passively willed 
believer. Now, in retaining religion, the wrong 
direction of the will, which must be denied, is a 
rebellion against love ; for love, considered with refer- 
ence to God and fellows, is religion. 

A steady maintenance of love, under trying dis- 
pensations of Providence, and strong provocations 
from fellows, must involve much endurance — suffer- 
ing. But the great difficulty will be at first. The 
process will become easier and easier — the danger of 
backsliding less and less. A stability in religion will 
be attained by the persevering, incredible to that 

lamentably numerous class of converts who yield upon 

(203) 



204 PAINS AND PLEASURES. 

the fxrst severe trial of all their grace — the '' tempta- 
tion" exactly up to what they are "able to bear/' 
though not ''above," as they imaginOj in contradic- 
tion of an inspired assurance. (1 Cor. x. 13.) 

1. The flow of love to Gfod will be opposed by pains 
of body. 

The soul will find it hard work to gird up itself by 
faith and independent placidity above flesh and blood, 
and say, '' The Lord is my portion. He is my all in 
all. I have all things in Him, and He is my all 
in all things." In anguish of body, this is difficult. 
But it can be done. And there will be an increasing 
facility in the sublime exercise. Suffering, endured 
aright, impels the soul higher and higher in God. 
Establishment in grace ensues, such as the reader 
may have seen indicated by the quiet lips and love- 
beaming eyes of some sorely-stricken saint. 

2. Love to Grod tvill be opposed by pleasures as well 
as pains — by gratifications of body or mind — at least 
in prospect, under Satanic proffers. At times the 
faithful soul may undergo a painful struggle in 
refusing even to look upon the spreading charms, 
"innocent enjoyments" in worldly phrase, guilefully 
proposed by the tempter. As there are some truly 
innocent indulgences of body and mind, the reader 
may ask what is to be the guide ? what is to discover 
the line ? It may be answered, that, on what Scrip- 



HAUGHTINESS AND IMPUDENCE. 205 

iuiKi IS not specific, the question should be, " Can I 
bring this gratification into the presence of God, and 
can it stay there in harmony and communion with. 
Him ?" If not, whatever may be the standard of the 
world in regard to the indulgence, the soul must 
deny itself, or leave God. But, like acts of denial of 
the palate at the too well furnished table, every suc- 
cessful struggle will leave an increased aptitude for 
triumph; and, under the force of a spiritual habit, 
there will be attained a holy indifierence to what once 
aroused strong proclivities. 

3. Love to a felloio may he assaulted hy ill usage^ 
with the aggravation of affected superiority. 

The suffering one may find it a very severe task to 
maintain meekness, while treated as an underling, an 
abject, and while Satan whispers, with exquisitely 
provoking skill, ^' The offender supposes you are just 
fool enough to bear it." But you can bear it; and 
bear it without being a fool — without, in any sense, 
degrading yourself. Your meekness will be the 
"meekness of wisdom" (James iii. 13); and as to 
dignity, you will be "better than he that taketh a 
city." (Prov. xvi. 32.) 

4. Love is often met ly the misconduct of a subor- 
dinate. 

The aggravation is that in your position you have 
a peculiar right to an opposite deportment. Base 
18 



206 AN EYE-SORE. 

ingratitude and gross impudence combine to provoke. 
But you may find relief in thinking of One very high, 
insulted extremely by those who, compared with him, 
were indeed very low. Yet there was no calling for 
lescions of ansrels to chastise the underlinors. From 
the very inferiority of the offenders, the suffering 
One's supplicating love drew an argument : " Father, 
forgive them ; for they know not what they do.'* 
(Luke xxiii. 34.) He left '' an example, that ye 
should follow his steps." (1 Peter ii. 21.) " If we 
suffer, we shall also reign with Him." (2 Tim. ii. 12.) 
.'5. Love may have to contend with severe i^Tovocation 
from some one closely related to you. 

The bitter reflection may be, "It was not an enemy 
that reproached me ; then I could have borne it : 
neither was it he that hated me that did magnify 
himself against me ; then I would have hid myself 
from him. But it was thou, a man, mine equal, my 
guide, and mine acquaintance." (Ps. Iv. 12, 13.) 

Satan may urge that the near ones of all other 
persons are free from such an eye-sore as the offend- 
ing one presents. But they are not so closely in- 
spected. Two statues of equal failure of finish would 
vary in appearance if but one were kept near the eye. 

6. Love may he sorely beset by j^eculiar unreason- 
ableness in trespass against us. 

But, however harassing may be this feature of 



INJUSTICE AND MALICE. 207 

assault, we can maintain the victory of love, in the 
consciousness that so doing is our own reasonable part 
to act. 

7. Akin to the foregoing aggravation is the marked 
injustice characterizing some acts of ill-will. One's 
clear rights may be so manifestly outraged, that indig- 
nation may, at first, seem a virtue. But forbearing 
love is still the virtue. "For this is thankworthy, 
if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, 
sufiering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when 
ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently ? 
but if, when ye do well and suffer for it, ye take it 
patiently, this is acceptable with God." (1 Peter ii. 
19, 20.) 

8. An onset may appear so purely malicious as to 
render it very difficult not to return a hearty hatred. 
But let it be kept in view that retaliation must trans- 
form the aggrieved into the same Satanic image 
with the aggressor — rendering two souls instead of 
one a prey to the destroyer. "What is thus to be 
gained ? 

9. The difficulty of patience under wrong-doing 
may be greatly increased by an apparent impossibility 
of saving the cause of Grod — the best interests of souls 
— from suffering from the misconduct. Satan will 
archly strive to draw the zeal of piety to a termina- 
tion in the fire of rancor towards those who are at once 



208 STRENGTH AND COMFORT. 

the enemies of God and us. But we may rest in love. 
Without volunteering to fight for God's glory, we may 
say to him, in strong faith, '' Surely the wrath of man 
shall praise thee : the remainder of wrath shalt thou 
restrain." 

10. A strong discouragement to the exercise of 
love may arise from the apparent uselessness of for- 
bearance to the culpable one — love being steadily met 
by unmodified and dogged ill-will. But say not that 
the severe effort of maintaining love is of no use. It 
is of use to the sufferer, if not to the offender. The 
student, in the exercise of swinging dumb-bells, is 
doing naught of use, i. e, to others, but it may save 
his own life. All the hard exercise of soul which God 
permits to his children shall add at least to their own 
health and vigor. 

11. The seclusion of one's sphere of suffering — the 
absence of appreciation and pity from all others as 
.well as from the injuring person — may leave some 
hearts much depressed for a time. But, after one 
has patiently " suffered awhile" under this peculiarity, 
it will be made to "establish, strengthen, and settle" 
the soul in God. May it not be a crowning exercise 
towards a full fixedness in grace, to* feel great need 
of encouraging sympathy, and yet be cut off from all 
beneath the Infinite Source ? God is thus fully found. 
If even some object delicious to the palate may be 



TWO DISCOURAGEMENTS. 209 

the more enjoyed in freedom from admixture, surely 
the soul's bliss is not reduced by an exclusion of all 
beneath the true portion. 

12. Akin to the obscurity of the sphere may be 
the smallness of the details of ones suffering. The 
soul may be much tempted to discouragement from 
the supposition that it neither receives nor deserves 
credit from God or man for patience in little things ; 
that, if public torture or martyrdom were permitted to 
Christian faithfulness, there could be a noticeable 
achievement ; but that there is an insignificance of 
effort in overcoming the every-day trifles which vexa- 
tiously assault a loving frame. This is indeed a 
mistake. During a few weeks more may thus be 
really endured than in a martyrdom. Hot sands may 
extend to an aggregate far beyond the bulk of the 
rock ; and to tread the former a long way may be 
more painful than to be crushed at once by the latter. 
Some saints may go up from the endurance of little 
things to a higher place in heaven than they would 
reach through martyrdom. Omniscience can make a 
close inspection, and apportion a full reward. And 
if little things be harder to bear because of their 
littleness, and a consequent tendency to become dis- 
heartened, then the greater reward will accrue. 

13. Another discouragement to a sufferer may be 
the thought that the assault comes upon him for his 



210 ANOTHER DISCOURAGEMENT. 

own fault. Under the question, ''What glory is it 
if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take 
it patiently?" the soul may be tempted to think 
nothing can be gained. But there is safety if no 
'' glory" in it. And safety will lead to gloi-y. There 
is something to be gained. If one has obtained for- 
giveness from God for a fault, the earthly conse- 
quences may be endured with a sense of innocency, 
even as if suffering for the fault of another. 

14. A person may be strongly inclined to surrender 
a loving frame of heart under the consciousness or 
Satanic accusation of having i^arthj failed. There is 
a diminished motive to sustain one who bitterly con- 
cludes that he has no longer a full Christian character 
to maintain. If but a statue or painting become 
marred, its preservation is less prized and less cheer- 
fully labored for. It is related that a maiden, who had 
been charged by her deceased mother with the keep- 
ing of a necklace as a memento, having indignantly 
refused to exchange it for another ornament, was 
enticed to part with one of the beads, under the plea 
that enough for a string would be left ; and tjiat then 
she was induced to surrender three more, inasmuch as 
the set was already broken ; and that then the wily 
barterer proffered very tempting apparel for all the 
others, meeting her declaration that she had promised 
to keep the string of beads, by the assurance that 



SURPRISE AND MYSTERY. 211 

she had now no string to keep, and that the remainder 
might as well be yielded. This account illustrates 
Satan's process of inveigling a soul out of grace, at 
every stage of which there is increased difficulty in 
repelling him; in guarding what has decreased in 
valuation. And while the partially backslidden 
should resist discouragement, and yield no further, 
all Christians should ever be ready to hold fast what 
they have under any disheartening apijearance of 
having lost ground — a tempx)rary illusion from the 
arch accuser of the brethren. 

15. The unexpectedness of an assault upon love may 
be the aggravation. The sudden jerk of an opposing 
wrestler has the more effect if unanticipated. Let 
the soul be on the lookout for abrupt onsets from men 
and devils, and thus avoid a paralyzing surprise t-o 
patience. 

16. A trial may be fiery and undefined. The heart 
may find itself in an indescribable struggle to retain 
the loving spirit. It may seem for a time that an 
opposing force is about to be victorious, while there 
is neither time nor skill to characterize its provoking 
elements. The mystery of the assault makes it the 
more appalling. But a few moments of steady and 
calm resistance will allow the elements to be defined. 
If any one appear which is not glanced at in this 
category, the reader may resolutely dispose of it with 



212 REPETITION AND LONa-CONTINUAN<:JE. 

spiritual philosopliTj and victoriously marcli on, the 
stronger for the struggle. 

17. An attack may seem intolerable from repetition. 
But let no sufferer think, because a constant dropping 
can wear a stone, that the soul must yield. The soul 
is not a stone ; and frequent pressure may be met by 
increasing rigidity and power. 

18. Finally, a trial may have been or may threaten 
to be so long-continued as to seem oVerpowering to 
the patience. In such a conflict the heart should 
grasp the truth that, relatively to one's eternal race 
of being, there can be, in a trial even for life, but a 
hand-breadth more of rugged ground, and that, pos- 
siblv, 

^' The rougher the way, the shorter our stay ; 

The tempests that rise 
Shall gloriously hurry our souls to the skies ; 
The fiercer the blast, the sooner ^tis past ; 

The troubles that come 
Shall come to our rescue, and hasten us home." 

And surely, " Our light affliction, which is but for a 
moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and 
eternal weight of glory, while we look not at the 
things which are seen, but at the things which are not 
seen." 



REJOICING IN SUPFEHING. 



If an orphan were transferred by adoption from a 
hut of want and cruelty to a palace of beauty, abun- 
dance, and love, would he appreciate and enjoy his 
new state the less because of the past adversity? 
When the child of God shall be surrounded and filled 
with the glories of heaven, will the bliss be lessened 
by recollection of the "much tribulation'' through 
which he had to "enter into the kingdom of God" ? 
Surely his "eternal weight of glory" will be "far 
more exceeding" in consequence of "affliction." 

Let us glance at some of the rapturous contrasts 
of heaven with earth. 

1. The redeemed one shall possess a hody "fashioned 
like unto Christ's glorious body.'" (Phil. iii. 21.) 

Certainly this body will not be insensible, but a struc- 
ture with sources and susceptibilities of bliss, under 
Omnipotent love, far beyond our present conceptions. 

Will it lessen the felicity then, to recollect physical 

toils, pains, agonies, and death ? Let us, therefore, 

submit to the ills of the body, not merely with stoical 

philosophy, saying if we must, we must; but " rejoice, 

(213) 



214 CHASTENING. 

inasmucli as we are partakers of Christ's sufferings ; 
that, when his glory shall be revealed, we may be glad 
also with exceeding joy." (1 Peter iv. 13.) 

2. When our heavenly Father shall have taken us 
fully to himself, find be rejoicing over us " with sing- 
ing" (Zeph. iii. 17), will our exultation be diminished 
by recollection of probationary chastenings from his 
hand ? An earthly parent may imagine that a child 
may be drawn by release from discipline to the more 
filial love. But such a child would not be fitted to 
prize parental love, and exercise a return for it, as 
would one under judicious chastening. The faults 
cured — the painful process ended — parental smiles 
would be welcomed and appreciated in a sense un- 
known to the over-indulged one. And when the great 
Parent shall wipe all tears from all faces of his child- 
ren, and sweetly assure each of an eternal freedom 
from the need of chastening, then the rapture will not 
be lessened by remembrance of the severe and mys- 
terious dealings of Providence, when ^^no chastening" 
seemed to be "joyous, but grievous." (Heb. xii. 11.) 
Therefore, " Despise not thou the chastening of the 
Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: for 
w^hom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth 
every son whom he receiveth." (Heb. xii. 5, 6.) 

And if we can trace a severe affliction to the inter- 
position of wicked men or of Satan himself, let us not 



HEAVINESS. 215 

despise it as something only evil, and faint under it, 
with the reflection that, though it might be patiently 
borne if from the Lord, yet it is intolerable in view of 
the source ; for neither men nor Satan could do aught 
to Job, nor can they to God's children now, except 
under permission of an overruling Power and far- 
reaching designs of grace. 

3. In heaven Gfod ivUl he revealed without a cloud. 
We shall see His face. Will it lessen the bliss of the 
beatific vision to recollect the probationary efforts of 
living by faith ? and how, again and again, "for a 
season," there was a "need to be in heaviness 
through manifold temptations'' ? (1 Peter i. 6 :) how 
(as saints who had a melancholic temperament will 
review) the accuser of the brethren at times cast 
down the conscientious heart under false fears of 
having grieved the- Spirit ? 

Let the Christian be patient under such a cloud, 
and find safety even in despair, if need be, by resolv- 
.ing that, if he sink to perdition, it shall be while 
striving to serve God as well as he knows. Thus he 
will be sure to attain eternal sunshine ; and he will 
rejoice in it the more, in consequence of his constitu- 
tional despondency. 

4. When the redeemed one finds himself actually 
before the throne of God, as sure of endless bliss as is 
the durability of that throne, the consciousness of 



216 CAUTION. 

safety will afford none the less exultation because of 
the cautious fears of 'probation. A sense of deliver- 
ance from danger is gratifying, in proportion to the 
magnitude of the evil escaped, and the security for 
the future. There is a breathing easy — a sweet relief 
— upon discovering some horrible sensation of earthly 
peril to have been but a dream ; or upon really escap- 
ing physical effects from a sinking boat, or unreined 
horse ; but there will indeed be more exquisite exulta- 
tion upon realizing escape from exposure to Jiell^ and 
of its being beyond an impassable '^ great gulf'' 
While some persons pride themselves upon eschewing 
all sense of liability to endless woe, and would, were 
they admitted to heaven, be doubly disqualified for a 
rapturous sense of deliverance, let us walk circum- 
spectly : ''Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being 
left us of entering into his rest, any of you should 
seem to come short of it." The sense of eternal 
safety will be the sweeter, because of the probationary 
— the cautionary fear. 

5. '' There remainetli^ therefore^ a rest for the peo- 
ple of Grod.'* 

There will be no toil in heaven^ though doubtless 
an ever ravishing exercise of glorified energies. 

May we not believe that the Divine Presence will 
be as free for the soul and as easily and sensibly appro- 
priated as the air is now for the body ? The saint's 



LABOR. 217 

exultation will not be lessened then, by remembrance 
of the struggles of faith, when God was neither received 
nor retained without arduous effort and vigilance. 
" Let us therefore" cheerfully endure to walk by faith, 
and in every appropriate way " labor to enter into that 
rest:' (Heb. iv. 11.) 

6. It will certainly be as easy for the saint to serve 
Grod in heaven as it is for the sinner to serve the devil 
on earth. The saved being may go with the current. 
Both will be right. Self-will, in heaven, will pre- 
cisely accord with the Divine, and shall for ever be 
fully gratified. Will the bliss be diminished by recol- 
lection that no change of earthly circumstances could 
lessen the warfare of the full Christian life ? Indeed, 
it will not ; and a cheerful practical reference to this 
fact may be of great moment to the reader. 

To say nothing of a probable increase of difficulty 
in maintaining sensible communion with God, were 
wealth, reputation, and social relations just such as 
self-will would choose, it is manifest that there would 
be no decrease. If the world were adjusted to suit 
one, there would certainly be none the less tendency 
to that love of the world which excludes " the love of 
the Father.'' (1 John ii. 15.) If the Emperor of Rus- 
sia and a banished serf in Siberia were to start in a 
race of piety, and progress alike, the serfs warfare 

would be no more than the emperor's. True, the lat- 
19 



218 SEVERE HARDNESS. 

ter may have his furs, his fires, his family, and his 
flatterers ; the former but just enough mitigation of 
frost and forlornness to keep the soul in the body. 
Keither shall be tempted above what he is able to bear. 
But the emperor will find it as hard work to maintain 
full communion with God under his temptations as will 
the serf under his. 

Is it not wise for each Christian to welcome the kind 
of warfare incident to his temporal sphere without 
muttering a futile preference for the sphere of his 
neighbor ? Each saint must have a full and steady 
trial; but in the unopposed flow of heavenly bliss 
there will ever be the more ravishing contrast. Who 
would not row steadily against a current for five 
minutes to rest in peace and plenty the remainder of 
his life ? And who would not for the five minutes 
welcome a severity of the current, were the severity 
to fix the degree of earthly bliss ? Lifetime here, is, 
compared with eternity, indescribably less than the 
five minutes compared with the lifetime- Who will 
not, then, during life, cheerfully endure hardness and 
severe hardness, when, according to the degree of it, 
is to be the degree of endless joy ? 

"Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's 
sufferings ; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye 
may be glad also with exceeding joy." In never 
shrinking from sufi'ering may be found the secret, 



THE FINAL SECRET. 219 

through grace, for the discharge of every duty — for 
making sure of heaven. Failure occurs when there 
is something hard to endure, 'whether it be a tax upon 
the purse, the brain, or the heart. 

The writer will add but one more sentence. It is 
requested that the duties inculcated in this book may 
be considered in connection with the thought of this 
privilege as well as duty of suffering for the greater 
weight of glory. Amen. 



I 



» 



OUTLINES 



WHICH HAVE BEEN FOLLOWED IN THIS BOOK. 



IN ESSAY ON ENLARGED BENEFICENCE. 

Chapter I. Importance of the theme. 

A great channel — An idol — A great work — A hindrance 
— *^ Money answereth all things" — A cheerful resigna- 
tion — A requirement from the poor as well as the 
rich — A strange thing — A momentous mission . . 13-21 

Chapter II. Enlarged Beneficence a duty. 

1. Teachings of Scripture : 

(1). Riches belong to God 22 

(2). Man is a steward 22 

(3). Donations for temporal want .... 23 

(4). Blessings upon liberality ..... 23 

(5). Jeopardy from riches 24 

2. Impressive examples : 

(1). In the Patriarchal dispensation ... 26 

(2). In the Mosaic dispensation .... 26 

(3). In the early Christian Church ... 29 

(4). In modern days \ 32 

3. Suggestion from consecration at conversion and sub- 
sequent religious experience 33 

19 * (221) 



222 



OUTLINES. 



debts 



Chapter III. Enlarged Beneficence suggested by real need. 

1. The Church may be more needy than the family 

2. Better results than wealth for heirs . . i . 

3. The condition of Pagans 

4. " " of others 

Chapter IV. The worthiness of Church enterprises, and 

the worthlessness of money in itself. 

1. The worthiness of Church enterprises : 

(1). The missionary department 
(2). The Bible cause .... 
(3). The tract society .... 
(4). The Sunday school .... 
(5). Church building, and payment of church 
(6). Education .... 

(7). The support of the ministry 
(8). Relief of Church members 

2. The worthlessness of money in itself: 

(1). Unintelligent and inanimate 

(2). Induces painful suspicion 

(3). Deceives as to future pleasures of charity 

(4). Separation from it inevitable . 

Chapter V. Enlarged Beneficence demanded by gratitude 
and spiritual prudence. 

1. Gifts from God : 

(1). Temporal treasures . 

(2). The atonement 

(3). Himself . . . . 

2. The safety of one's own soul 

3. The comparative value of the soul 



34 
35 
41 
43 



45 

46 
46 
47 
48 
48 
49 
60 

50 
51 

52 
53 



54 
54 

56 

58 
60 



AN ESSAY ON SYSTEMATIC BENEFICENCE. 

Chapter I. System in Enlarged Beneficence obligatory. 

1. Inference ,69 

2. Injunction 70 

Chapter II. System illustrated by examples. 

1. The pious in former dispensations, and the Christians 
of the Apostolic age 72 



OUTLINES. 



223 



2. Since the Reformation : 

(1). Lord Hale and others 
(2). N. R. Cobb 
(3). Louisa Osborn 
(4). Normand Smith 
(5). An anonymous writer 
(6). At the start of Methodism 
(7). For Wesleyan missions 
(8). Samuel Budgett 
(9). E. S. F., or " Zaccheus'' 
(10). Mrs. Eliza Garrett . 

Chapter IIL System, in its results to the Church. 

1. From those with moderate possessions as well as from 
the wealthy 

2. In view of the increasing wealth of Church members 

3. In view of the peculiarities of the nation 

4. In view of the discoveries and inventions of the times 

5. As in one's own schemes . 

6. As in national taxation 

7. Tendency against financial fluctuations 

8. Increased interest felt in religious causes 

Chapter IV. System, in its results to the Christian himself. 

1. Sabbath influences 

2. Guard to patience 

3. Guard to healthy motives . « 

4. Guard against mere impulsiveness 

5. Discipline of intellect 

6. Needful in order to peace of conscience in view of 
God's systematic grace to us 

7. The power of habit to be secured against soul-ruining 
influences 

8. Suggested by the general prosperity of the times, as 
needful to prevent a fatal concurrence of mind and 
heart 

9. By the Scriptural records of infatuation and ruin from 
devotion to money 



94 

96 



224 



OUTLINES. 



Chapter V. Excuses in regard to Beneficence. 

1. With reference to Divine sovereignty 

2. Demand for pecuniary instrumentality 

3. Ereeness of the Gospel 

4. Saving effect of the Gospel 

5. Rate of Gospel conquests . 

6. Disapproved channels for money 

7. One's not having been consulted 

8. Selling property to secure cash for Zion 

9. Obtaining a given amount for self 

10. Doubts of Church economy 

11. As to exceeding one's proportion 

12. Uncertainty as to proportion 

13. Hesitancy to ascertain comparative merits of the 
Church's enterprises .... 

14. Distance of Church treasuries . 

15. One contributor, and the mass of results 

16. Fearlessness of omission in but one thing 

Chapter VL Advices as to immediate Beneficent action, 
' 1. Prayer 

2. Now is the easiest time 

3. Decide in love 

4. To be almost resolved is to fail . 

5. You must resolve at a given point of time 

6. There is a critical point 

7. Try your resolution by action . 

8. Eear not carnal criticism . . i 

9. Never intermit ..... 

10. Keep in view spiritual ends 

11. Be decided once for all . 

12. Gain all you can, so as to give the more 

13. How to make an estimate . 

14. Record the vow .... 



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114 

115 
116 
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121 
121 
122 
123 
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123 
124 
125 
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125 
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126 
128 
128 



OUTLINES. 225 

PAGE 

A FIELD FOR HEROISM : addressed to private members of 

THE CHURCH, MALE AND FE3f ALE — AS WELL AS TO YOUNG MINISTERS. 

The true circuit for fame — A startling lack of the age — Per- 
sonal responsibility — Qualification for receiving light — 
True wisdom — The home and foreign fields compared — A 
scrutiny — Obligatory passiveness — Excuses — Directions 131-142 

A SPECIAL PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY. 

1. The training of children for missionaries, a notable 
demand of the times 143 

2. A wonderful example of parental consecration . 145 

3. The Divine right to one's offspring .... 147 

4. Encouragement in the very magnitude of the cross . 148 

5. The safety of the child 148 

6. Excuses considered 149 

7. Directions I 151 

THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. 

A sensibility unknown to us — Gethsemane — Calvary 156-158 

DELIVERANCE FROM A HORRIBLE PIT. 

A strange and fatal accident — The pit of sin — Exposure to 
being buried alive — A great cord — Fears — Faith — A ray 
of light— Full light ...... 159-164 

A BRIEF COMPARISON. 

Christian perfection — A rose — A fatal restriction . . . 165 

PRIVATE PRAYER. 

1. A guard against hypocrisy 166 

2. Strengthens faith 167 

3. Prevents undue dependence on prayers of others . 167 

4. The whole mind brought to bear .... 167 

5. Facilitates suitable temporal pursuits . . . 168 

6. Results in the force of a habit to guard the soul . 168 

7. Interrupts a worldly frame 169 

8. Prevents apostasy 169 



226 OUTLINES. 

PAGE 

A HINT TO OPEN DOUBTERS OF ENDLESS MISERY. 

Increase of sin and decrease of "hell" — A question . 171-172 

HINTS TO SECRET DOUBTERS OF ENDLESS MISERY. 

The soul, sleepless and ceaseless — Why permitted to be lost 173-177 

THE FIRST STINa OF THE UNDYING WORM. 

Life reviewed — The voice of Jesus — The voice of conscience 

— Remorse — Despair 178-180 

INIQUITY IN THE HEART. 

The judgment anticipated — A disappointed class — Tests 181-185 

FOOLISH TALKING AND JESTING. 

Questions from the Judge — Speechless guilt . . 186-188 

OUTWARD ADORNING. 

Three witnesses — Subtle self-deception — No reply . 189-190 

THE CONDEMNATION OF THE DEVIL. 

Thoughts for the conscience — An impossibility — No plea 191-193 

LOST RELATIVES. 

Palliatives to the fears of private affection — Ties of earth — 

Ties of heaven — No mourning in heaven . , . 194-195 

GROWTH IN HEAVEN. 

Nebulae — Something more wonderful .... 196-197 

LOVE IN THE TRINITY. 

A fellowship without beginning — An infinity without crea- 
tures — Disinterested benevolence .... 198-199 

THE EXCELLENCY OF LOVE. 

No happiness but in love — God's chosen element — A dis- 
covery at the gate of heaven 200-202 

SUFFERING IN LOVE. 

1. Under pains of body 204 

2. Temptations to pleasures 204 



OUTLINES. 



227 



10. 

11. 

12. 
13. 
14. 
15. 
16. 

it 

18. 



Affected superiority « 

Misconduct of a subordinate 

Misconduct of a near one 

Unreasonableness 

Injustice 

Malice 

Apparent injury to the cause of God 

Apparent uselessness of forbearance 

Seclusion 

Smallness of details 

Judicial aspect 

A sense of partial failure 

Unexpectedness 

Mystery 

Repetition 

Long continuance . 



EBJOICINa IN SUFFERING. 

1. In prospect of a glorified body • 

2. Of Divine favor without chastening . 

3. Of seeing God without a cloud . 

4. Of the impossibility of losing heaven 

5. Of rest 

6. Of the gratification of self-will . 



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